In 2003 God visited us in ngm and showed us the depth of his love, which not only changed us, but also made us realise that we had been asleep to the deeper realms of God’s glory and presence!  The Lord took us to new heights in him and we never want to go back to the way things were beforehand. The Lord called us to come closer to him and when we responded the first thing he did was to show us how much he loved us.  It was as if he woke us up with his kiss of love.  We didn’t know we were asleep, but we were!  We were going for God with everything we had yet we discovered we were missing so much of what God wanted us to experience.  As the Lord showed us more of himself, we couldn’t get enough of his presence.

Scenes of revival began to break out at ngm; scenes I had only read about in history books.  Each night streams of people came to the open microphone, some to express their hunger for God, some to openly repent of ‘hidden secrets’ in their hearts and others to tell the Lord how much they loved and delighted in him.  We had never before witnessed such hunger for God, open confession and repentance like this.  People were lying face down on the floor crying deep tears of sorrow.  Their tears were literally causing large puddles of water on the floor as people confessed sins of pride, jealousy, pornography, selfishness, lust, greed and much more.  It was an amazing sight, one that I will never forget.

Each of us began to spend more and more time in the secret place with Jesus and as we did our hunger for him and for his presence seemed to know no bounds.  We had fallen in love all over again.  It was as if we had been born again, again!  He lit a fire of joy in us that has never gone out.  We could only describe this incredible joy as having a ‘woohoo’ in our hearts; and we never want to lose that ‘woohoo’!  Nothing else satisfies other than living in his presence, where there is fullness of joy.  Many people try to find that joy in possessions, in relationships, in work, in drugs etc., and although at times we can experience a high through these things, no high can ever compare to the ‘woohoo’ that the Lord gives us!

C.S. Lewis said,  “Indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink, sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are too easily pleased”

Once you have experienced the depth of God’s love and his oasis of pleasure – nothing else satisfies!  If you have never experience that love – then why not experience it today?  Let’s not be satisfied with anything less!

When Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden it doesn’t tell you in the Bible how they felt, but I am sure they must have been totally devastated.  Because of their wrong choices, they could no longer live in their oasis where they had experienced the depths of God’s pleasure and delight and what it was like to walk each day with their creator.  There must have been deep immense regret and enormous sadness in their hearts.  They had lost so much and at that point so did the whole human race.  We were created for Eden.  We were created to have a deep and precious relationship with our God and so when Adam and Eve sinned, the Lord looked to find a way for us being able to live in the land of pleasure once more.

Throughout the years he sent many prophets to call his people back to himself, but eventually he did the unthinkable, he sent his one and only son to this earth to reverse everything that happened when mankind sinned.  On the cross, Jesus made a way for us to come back into that deep and wonderful relationship with the Father.  He came not only to restore Eden, but he came to make it better than it had ever been in the beginning.  What wonderful news!  Yet here we are 2000 years since Jesus died and rose again and so many of us live without really knowing the depth of his love, his delight and his pleasure in us!  He has given us an incredible inheritance and yet we are content to live outside of his promises.  Even though some of us have asked Jesus to come into our lives, we choose to live in the land of pain and rejection rather than in the oasis of delight that God has prepared for us.  He wants us to experience his delight, his joy and his love.  When we find the greatest treasure ever, we surely will become so intoxicated with joy and delight that nothing else will satisfy!

I read recently in Joshua 18:3, where Joshua challenges the people of Israel to take a hold of what God had already given them.  He says, “How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your fathers has given you?”  What a challenge to us several thousands of years later.  How long will we wait before taking possession of the land the Lord has given us?  He tells us in the Bible that he delights in us, yet how many of us live experiencing and relishing that enormous delight?  He tells us in the Bible that we are valued and have been chosen, yet so many of us think of ourselves as worthless?  The Lord came to bring us freedom; he secured freedom by overcoming sin, death and hell, yet how many of us live in freedom from fears, worries and concerns?  How long will we regard ourselves as useless and worthless, when we have already been given a land to possess, a land where we are loved and adored?  Why do we allow our fears to tie us up when we have already been given freedom?  How long will we wait?  Lets not be satisfied with anything less than what the Gospel offers us!

It says in Genesis 3 that when the Lord came to walk in the garden with his beloved creation, Adam and Eve hid from him.  It was a forlorn thing to do but it’s true to say that our natural self tends to want to hide the sin we have committed not only from others but from ourselves and from God.  We push the guilt deep inside of ourselves not realising that we are storing up problems for a later stage.  Guilty secrets always have a cost!  Those things that are hidden will one day pop up to let us know that they are still there.  Guilt needs to be dealt with and the only way to do that is to confess it and allow the Lord to forgive you. The great news is that every single thing we have done whether in our past, our present or even in our future has been dealt with at the cross 2000 years ago!  Jesus died to set us free from our guilty secrets!  Woohoo indeed!

It’s interesting to note that even though the Lord knows what has happened with Adam and Eve he doesn’t condemn, instead he asks them questions.  As Christians we so often condemn!  So many people leave the church because we have taken it on board to be their judge and jury.  We often forget we are all sinners saved by grace!  We forget that the Lord Jesus told us clearly not to judge.

I recently heard a story about how Billy Graham answered a difficult question when he was attending a rally to support Bill Clinton.  It was just after Bill Clinton’s sex scandal had been made public and so the reporter asked Billy how he could support such a man!  Billy Graham answered the question wisely.  He said, “It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge and my job to love.”  Oh, that we would learn to love others in that way.  It’s not our job to judge or even to try and convict, it’s our job to love people into the Kingdom.

During God’s questions, Adam and Eve finally spurt out their version of the truth. It’s interesting to note that when we do something wrong, we often look for a scapegoat to take the blame and this is exactly what Adam and Eve did.  Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.  When things don’t go well for us, there is always the temptation to blame someone else.

With Adam and Eve there was a slither of truth in their answer, but they needed to own their own choices. Each of us is responsible for our own choices.  We need to be able to own the choices we make in life and freely admit when we get it wrong.  No one forced Adam or Eve to eat the apple; they both chose to do so with their own free will, knowing that the Lord had commanded them not to do that.

Let’s learn from the way the Lord, out of love, dealt with Adam and Eve; maybe we need to ask questions rather than being the judge and the jury of others.  Let’s pray for love, grace and wisdom for ourselves and for others.

Things like worry, fear, guilt, stress, condemnation, insecurity or rejection can stop us from knowing God’s delight in our lives!   A lady attended my Spiritual Health Weekends and during that time heard what it says in the Bible about how the Lord treated the prostitute, Rahab.  I had spoken on how the Lord loves each of us equally and even though Rahab did not belong to the nation of Israel, even though she was a prostitute, the Lord had plans and purposes for her life.  Rahab’s future began to change when she helped the spies who had come from the nation of Israel to escape from Jericho.  She saved their lives and because of that, when the walls of that great city fell down and her city was destroyed, she and all her family were saved.

However, God didn’t just save her life; he blessed her in the most incredible way.  Not only did the nation of Israel invite her to live among them as one of them, but also she met and married a wonderful Jewish man and in time they had a child who eventually became the great grandfather of the most famous king of Israel – King David.  Not only that, but if you look in Matthew 1:5 you will see that Rahab is mentioned in Jesus’ ancestors.  She is specifically mentioned in the line of Jesus.  What an amazing God!  He delights in us and blesses us beyond what we can ask or even imagine!

When my second son was born, I remember Daniel, my first son, asking his dad and I if we would love him less now that he had a brother.  We told him that when a child is born into the family something happens to your heart.  Instead of him having to share our love, our hearts would grow bigger to enable us to love him in the same deep way we had always loved him and yet still have room to love his brother in the same way.  That is just a small reflection of how the Lord loves each of us.  Don’t think that because you have done wrong things in your life that the Lord could never love you. Rahab and so many others in the Bible show us that this is never the case.

As the lady listened to the teaching on Rahab she suddenly realised that it was possible to get rid of the condemnation she had lived under for years!  She never could accept that God could love her because of all the horrible things that had gone on in her past.  The truth that night set her free!  Condemnation never comes from God!

Are you living under fear or condemnation?  Is guilt, stress or rejection weighing you down?  Then you can be assured that it does not come from the Lord.  Jesus did not come to condemn us, but he came to set us free!  Take time to sit with the Lord and if you have never confessed what you have done wrong, then do so and ask for his forgiveness.  He will not only forgive you, but he will free you from those things that have caused a huge burden in your heart.  He will free you like he did for this lady and like her you can feel as free as a bird.  Don’t stay in your cage of guilt and shame any longer, but instead let God set you totally and utterly free.

A long time ago before my husband, Ray died we had the privilege of going to a leader’s prayer event in the Palace of Westminster.  Around sixty leaders met together to listen to what the Lord had to say about our nation.  It was a brilliant experience and whilst we were there, we met some leaders we had not had contact with for many years.  One of those leaders was David Pawson.  During the 80’s we had come to know and love David and much of his teaching had been so helpful in our early years as leaders.  We were so thrilled that we had another chance to spend a few minutes with him.  He told us that at the age of 82, he is still travelling around the world teaching people about the Kingdom of God.  He went on to tell us that he had been invited to speak at a very large Catholic convention in Ireland where God moved in a powerful way.  He had never spoken at this convention before and so during his time there he asked the leadership how they knew about him.  Their answer took him by surprise.  They said, “An angel told us your name!”  They went on to explain that they had never heard of him and when an angel told them to invite him, they had to look on the Internet to see if a David Pawson who was a Christian teacher even existed!  They found his web site and wrote to invite him to Ireland.

Apart from the fact that having an angel as your promoter seems the best thing ever, the first thought that occurred to me when David told me that story was that Heaven knows David’s name.  I thought to myself, “That’s amazing!  Even the angels know David Pawson’s name.  Wow!”   It was only later that I remembered that this same thing happened to Peter in the book of Acts.  An angel told Cornelius to send men to Joppa and bring back a man named Peter!  The wonderful truth is that the Lord and the heavenly hosts know each of our names!  They know yours and they know mine!  Isaiah 49:1 says that the Lord calls us by name!  When the Lord speaks our name, it is so intimate and encouraging.  He knows us by name; his words are not for someone else, they are for us!  It also tells us in Luke 10.20 that if we have given our lives to the Lord Jesus then our name is written in his book of life.  Just think about this for a moment, if you have said Yes to Jesus – then right now your name is written in Heaven.  Long before you get to go to Heaven, there is a book and your name is written in it.  Not only that, it is also true that our names are also written on his heart.  How wonderful is that?  Whether you are a Christian or not, the truth is that he loves you so very much.  Do you know that he knows how many hairs are on our heads?  He knows the deepest and most intimate things about us.  He knows the things that we have never told anyone else.  He knows the good and the bad about each of us and he still loves us.  He sends his angels to protect us and to guard us in all our ways!  He loves us unconditionally!  Now that really is a WOW!

We only need to look at the way the Lord created Adam to see his intimacy with him.  It says in Genesis 2:7, ‘The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being’.  What a wonderful picture of intimacy at its deepest level.  God breathes his life into his creation and because of his breath we become a living being, able to communicate and have profound intimacy with our creator.  The truth is that if God removed his breath of life from us, we would die!  In Acts 17:28 it says, ‘In him we live and move and have our being’, which, in other words, means that without the Lord and the life he gives, we would cease to exist.  However, because he lives, this means we can live also and experience the intimacy that God intended for his creation in the beginning.  The Lord walked in the garden with Adam and Eve and the Lord walks with you!  In Deuteronomy 31:8 he says, ‘The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged’.  He won’t ever desert you!

When my mother-in-law because of medical reasons, had to be taken into a care home this was the first time she and my father-in-law had been apart.  Neither of them wanted this to happen and fought against it for some time, but gradually my husband’s dad recognised that his wife needed medical attention 24 hours a day and therefore this was the only option.  They had been married many years and still loved each other deeply.  Each day for three years my father-in-law would go to the home where his wife was and sit in her very small bedroom with her.  Even though she could hardly communicate with him because of the medical condition she had, he would sit beside her and hold her hand.  He spoke to her, he helped her eat; he looked after her every need for many hours every day.  He did this because she was his delight!  When she died after 66 years of married life, he was heartbroken for his friend, his darling, his beloved, his delight had gone!  Love means not walking away during the hard times of life and my father-in-law did not once walk away.  He found enormous pleasure in just being with her.  While she was alive, he gave of himself to her in such a remarkable sacrificial way, demonstrating to all around just how much he adored her.  He didn’t do that because he had to, he did it because he wanted to; he loved her so much.

His love is such a wonderful reflection in a small way of how much God loves every single one of us.  He won’t leave us when times are bad, he is always there showing us how much he cares.  Even the smallest cry for help he will hear because he is so close to each of us. He doesn’t stay because he has to; he stays because he wants to!

In the Bible in Zephaniah 3:17 it says, ‘The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing’.  This has always been a very special verse for me and I have always enjoyed reading and meditating on it.  However, one day in the early hours of the morning, God brought the reality of this verse home to me.  I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake, I don’t know whether I was genuinely hearing this or in the Spirit, but I know it was real.  I heard the sound of God singing over us, his creation and it was incredible.  The sound was loud, but gentle, it was melodic and tuneful, it was filled with harmonies even though it was only one voice.  The song was saturated with the greatest joy I have ever known and on hearing the sound it made me want to explode with joy.  It was bursting with creativity and God’s enormous pleasure was within every note.  The sound of his voice didn’t just fill my mind; it seemed to me that even the whole universe was not big enough to contain this most amazing voice.  I had never heard such stunning singing; it was truly not of this world.  As I was listening to God’s song, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, “Nancy, I constantly sing songs of delight and joy over you; I sing like this over everyone!”  I knew from the Bible that the Lord sings over us, but now I had heard the beautiful sound of his voice for myself.  It was genuinely incredible; words cannot even begin to describe it, no adjectives I could use would do it justice!  It was a sound that I wanted to listen to forever.

When my late husband used to go into our studio to record a song, he will often tell the singer to make the lyrics bleed.  What he meant by this was for the singer to really live the lyrics and allow their emotions to be released through the song.  When I heard the Lord’s song, the thought that occurred to me was that if Ray had been producing the sound, he wouldn’t have needed to tell the Lord to show emotion or passion it was already there in huge quantities. His love and passion for me was so evident.

Today – listen to his song of joy over you!  You may not have the same experience as me, but my prayer will be that as you meditate on the word of God and let it take root within you – you will know that he is constantly singing songs of delight over you!  He loves you so very much and rejoices over you always!  Tune into Heaven’s sounds today and listen to the greatest symphony ever as he delights in you and rejoices over you!

I heard recently what happened to Fred Astaire, the greatest dancer ever, when he was attending an audition to get a job before he was famous!   After his audition, the Director of the show wrote the following words on his report on Fred, ‘can’t sing, can’t act, can dance a little!’  We can laugh at this now knowing that Fred went on to be one of the most amazing singers, actors and exceptional dancers of his time, but I am sure those words must have hurt.  However, despite the negative comments, Fred went on to prove his critic wrong!

I was walking down a street with a group of friends in Spain one day, when one of them said in my hearing, “The only thing Nancy has going for her is the shape of her body!”  When the others chastised her for her words, she went on to explain that in her opinion without my body shape I would look nothing!  I laughed at what she said with the others in the group, but later thought to myself that if I had been insecure those words could have deeply hurt me.  I had gone through years of hearing my late husband, Ray tell me that he thought I was beautiful (even though he saw me at times at my worst!) and therefore her words didn’t hurt as much as they would have if I hadn’t known the deep love of my husband.  When we know that God delights in us, when we really know that he loves us warts and all, then we can deal better with the criticisms that life often brings.

The way to know his love is to keep reading the Bible and sit in his presence daily.  When we soak ourselves in him and his word, when we listen to the truth and hide it deep within us, then we will experience how the truth can set us free from the lies the enemy can fool us into believing. Do remember it was the lies of the serpent in the Garden of Eden that eventually led to sin and fear.

Recently I heard a story of an 80-year-old man who had felt he had ‘lost’ his salvation.  He was so disturbed that all he could do was to cry at the top of his voice, “I am lost!  I am lost!”  His wife took him to the home of Smith Wigglesworth, an amazing man of God to ask if Smith would pray for him.  When Smith met the couple, it was impossible not to hear the utter despair in this man’s voice as he shouted at the top of his voice, “I am lost!  I have committed the unpardonable sin.  I am lost. I am lost!”  When I heard this story, I was already thinking in my mind what I would do or say to change this man’s condition, however what Smith Wigglesworth did just didn’t occur to me!  Led by the Holy Spirit, Smith Wigglesworth commanded the lying spirit to come out!  In a moment, the evil spirit left and the man was completely free!  What a lesson for us all.  We must not allow the lies of the enemy to find a place in our lives.  The devil knows that if he can capture our thought life, he has won a mighty victory over us!  Today and every day – eat the truth of God’s words and keep them alive in your heart!

I love the fact that when you cultivate your relationship with God, he can speak at any time and tell you to do something that will change someone’s life.  One day, I was sorting out my mail at my computer and saw a letter from a lady who had initially contacted me by telephone asking for prayer.  I felt a little nudge to contact this lady again and there and then wrote a little note and felt from the Lord I should include a copy of my book, ‘Oasis of Hope’.  I did what I felt the Lord wanted me to do and prayed that the note and the book would encourage her.

Some weeks later I got a letter back from her to tell me that the day my book and note arrived was the day after she had seen a close friend die!  She had been reeling from this death and was finding it difficult to have any hope for the future, when on her doorstep arrived my encouraging note and a book containing wonderful stories of hope!  As she read the book, the stories filled her heart with real dynamic hope.  She wrote to me and said, “You have no idea what a blessing this has been at just the right time.  When your letter arrived a friend of mine had just died.  I had sat watching her slowly slip away to the Lord the previous day and because of other negative stuff happening in my life, I was really floundering in a place of despair and hopelessness.  This precious book has been a literal GODSEND!”

She started to do the spiritual exercises at the end of every chapter and was finding that the exercises were encouraging her and bringing her much needed refreshment.  On the back of the card she sent to me was the printed words ‘Blank Inside’ to which she had put a little note that said, “Not any more!”  She was no longer void of any hope, but instead she was filled with God’s hope for the future.

When you spend time with Jesus and dwell in his presence you can’t help but know more of how much he loves and delights in you!  When you begin to believe that truth, your life will never be the same again!  Try it today and you will see!  Smith Wigglesworth, a powerful man of God who lived many years ago said,  “If we only knew how precious we were in the sight of God, we would scarcely be able to sleep for thinking of his watchful loving care.  There is nothing like it.”  This is so true; there is nothing in this world that comes even close to the thrill of knowing how much God delights in each of us.  Let’s decide today to keep cultivating our relationship with him, lets begin to hear his voice and do what he is calling you to do.  As you do – God will change your life totally.

When Ray and I responded to the call of God on our lives to leave our home, our car, our families, our friends, our church and our jobs in Ayr in Scotland and travel to Wolverhampton in England the sacrifice seemed so small.  We left a beautiful seaside resort in Ayr, our three bedroomed bungalow, our sporty car and two very good jobs to work with British Youth for Christ.  We didn’t know anyone in Wolverhampton apart from two dear friends whom we had got to know the previous year and so they invited Ray and I to live with them.  They lived in a house, which they rented in the red-light district of Wolverhampton.  The house had dampness running down some of its walls and prostitutes touting for business outside, yet we never looked back once because we were so excited at the journey God had us on.  As the years passed, people would often ask us about the sacrifice we had made, but it didn’t even occur to us that it was a sacrifice!  We had fallen in love with Jesus and we only wanted to do what he wanted us to do no matter where that was or what that entailed!  Knowing all the ups and downs, the good and the not so good times, the pain and the hardships we have been through since our call in 1980, the question is, would we do it all again?  The answer is a resounding YES!  There is such fun, adventure, laughter, joy and delight in getting to know God and following his will for our lives which far outweighs the painful and hard times that we often experience.

The truth is that the more you get to know the Lord, the more you realise that there is so much more to know!  Even though Paul had incredible heavenly visions, even though he was caught up into paradise and heard things he was not permitted to tell others, he still poured out a cry from his heart, “I want to know Christ.”  We will never get to the end of knowing all there is to know but the more you do know, the more you want to know!  The more you experience his delight and his joy, the more you find you cannot live without really knowing him.  There is no other way of knowing the Lord, other than spending time with him.  I know how easy it is for our attention to be taken up with the worries and cares that this world brings, but if we don’t tend the garden so to speak, the weeds will grow so quickly and begin to squeeze the joy, laughter and delight out of our hearts.

When someone doesn’t spend time with the Lord his or her spiritual light within dulls and they can easily fall away!  Falling away from God never happens overnight, it’s always a process.  If you stop spending time alone with him, you will find that the temptation to do wrong seems to burn more strongly within you!   However, when you spend time with the Lord and keep his word in your heart, then when temptation comes you can fight it much more easily.  Experiencing Jesus and his joy is the best antidote ever to sinning! Discover who he really is today!