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Hello again family, friends and blog readers. The following blog entry is the follow up of my previous one My Spiritual Awakening. In this blog I will to continue to recount my testimony. I hope you enjoy and more importantly have the wisdom not to judge my decision and change in direction.
On the 23rd of December I left Wellington in the GP campervan which I had agreed to rent for my two weeks off. I was on my way to Stratford in Taranaki to meet up with Mary who I had first met ten weeks earlier while signing her up as a new member for GP. As I mentioned in my last blog I had been keeping in contact with Mary every two to three weeks giving her updates on my experiences and adventures. But over the last month she had become worried with the path I was walking sending me warnings to be careful of the doors I was opening and the people I was meeting. She told me many times to seek wisdom and just be very careful! In our last conversation three days earlier I had told her about my Thai Chi class and what the instructor had said. I also told her that after the class I was meditating on a beach and it was raining everywhere except the area around me. While meditating I kept manifesting no rain on me, don't rain on me and for over an hour it pissed down everywhere except on me. On sharing this with her she told me to stop meditating immediately as it was very very dangerous especially when you did not understand what you were operating in. This response shocked me a bit and I asked her to share more of her understanding of what was happening with me. She informed that she could not tell me over the phone and that it would be best that we meet up asap. What she did tell me was that i had a prophetic gift which kind of tied in with some of the stuff that Mark had told me in Northlands. We then agreed that I would meet up with her in Stratford on the 23rd once I had finished with GP.
On my way from Wellington to Stratford I was wondering what Mary was going to tell me as she had told me many times that she could only tell me so much over the phone and through email. Therefore I was obviously excited especially since in our last call she had told me that I was a prophet. A prophet of what or what kind of prophet I had no idea but I was soon to find out. I eventually arrived in Stratford around four where I was greeted by Marys beautiful smile outside the Sharespearian tower. After a quick catch up she told me to follow her as we were gonna head out to her farm house up on the edge of Mt Taranaki. On arriving at the house which was a cozy little wooden farm house we went inside and I began to recount my experiences since we had parted ways ten weeks earlier. She listened patiently only interrupting once or twice to get clarity on certain events. Once I had finished she simply said that it was time she took me on a little adventure. We then left her house and went on a drive up towards the base camp on Mt Taranaki till we finally arrived at the car park beside Dawson Falls. On arriving we immediately left the car and made our way down the path through the beautiful and wild bush till we arrived at the magnificent Dawson Falls.
What happens next is going to interest many of you but it will also cause many of you think im a bit crazy yet iv always been a bit weird so nothing too new! When we arrived at the waterfall Mary and I stood there for a number of minutes in silence admiring this magnificent site. After a few minutes Mary broke the silence and kind of shocked me when she instructed to me to stand right at the edge of the waterfall and almost underneath and to ask for the truth, even to shout it out. Being the weird person that I am and considering all my other spiritual experiences over the last ten weeks I had no problem doing this. Therefore I did as was instructed and at first nothing happened. But then I shouted out for the truth and seconds later it hit me!! Suddenly I felt this presence all around me and heard a voice in my head that told me that God was the truth. This was followed with an awesome awakening of energy and power coming from my stomach. With this happening I stumbled out of the waterfall feeling a combination of being overwhelmed, freaked out, ecstatic, happy and free! As I approached Mary I suddenly started to laugh as I could not believe what was happening and everything just felt so good, so right! She knew obviously and she walked over to me, hugged me and told me that now that I knew the truth I had been set free. She followed this by asking me if I would receive Jesus into my heart as my saviour? I answered yes! She then told me that if I asked God to forgive me for all the times I had messed up in my life, the people I had hurt and the mistakes I had made he would happily forgive me as he had sent his own son to redeem all of us. To this I obviously asked for Gods forgiveness and as a result I received my lord Jesus Christ into my heart. Without realizing it at the time I had just been baptized in the Holy Spirit. This was only the beginning though as what happened next was pretty awesome. Out of nowhere Mary stated speaking in this intense, weird yet wonderful foreign language and she informed that she was speaking in tongues which was one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. She then told me that I was now to trust in God and ask him to give me the ability to speak in tongues also. I did this and soon after I was speaking in an aggressive islander sort of tongue that resembled Maori in parts. This was not all though as the next thing Mary did was pull a pen and paper out of her bag and told me that she was going to leave me for a while. She told me to write down whatever came to my head on the piece of paper over the next few minutes as she said that God had blessed me with the gift of prophesying although now I know that all can prophecy once they have enough faith. She left me for fifteen minutes and in that time I wrote down a lot of stuff that came to my head regarding my life and some of my friends. I also drew a map. Mary then shouted down to me informing me that it was time to go as it was getting dark. What an experience!
On the way back to Marys house I obviously had so many questions. I was simply blown away by what had just happened at the waterfall and I was a little overwhelmed by the whole event. But Mary was amazing and managed to make me feel comfortable answering all my questions. She explained that we were what many people call mystics and that Christians who are baptized in the Holy Spirit have all the gifts that Jesus had. Through faith we could prophesy, heal, speak in tongues, perform miracles, give words of knowledge to people and many more gifts. On arriving back at her house she continued to answer all the questions I had for her. She eventually went on to teach me about the five fold ministry of the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the teacher and the pastor. She told me that we operated in the five fold ministry and that all churches should operate under the five fold ministry. She told me that Christians were not Catholics or Protestants but simply people who loved Jesus and follow the teachings of the Bible and lived by faith. She told me a lot that first night all of which I cant remember as I was pretty overwhelmed the whole time. But one thing I felt for certain was free as I now knew the truth.
I stayed in Marys house that night and the following morning she brought me down to Kaupokonui river which flows beside Kaponga. At this beautiful river on a sunny 24th of December I was baptized and born again. This was another incredible experience and as I rose up out of the water I felt as if I had just broken free of something that had been holding me back my entire life. I was born again free to be all that god has planned for me. Following being baptized it was time for me to head back to Wellington as I had it planned for me to spend xmas with my irish friends living in Wellington. Mary and I parted ways and she gave me a whole load of books including a Bible and a number of CDs along with a few DVDs to watch. My trip back to Wellington was short lived though as on the 26th after spending a great xmas day with my buddies I felt I really needed to go back to Marys. The reason I suddenly had to return was because I was becoming a little freaked out with all the sudden changes in my life as in becoming a Christian I had decided to give up alcohol and smoking weed. But these were only minor issues compared to some of the issues I had flying around my head and I needed Mary to make sense of things for me.
I arrived back at Marys that evening and ended up spending the following ten days with her and this is where my discipleship under Mary began. Instead of going to Ladeda for New years I visited Tauranga with Mary where we spent two great nights with some of her Christian friends up there. On new years day Mary took me to my first Christian Church experience. It was Changepoint Church and it was nothing short of awesome. A Christian Church is very different to the typical Catholic Church that I had grown up attending. In the church we spent most our time worshiping God which involved everyone singing along and many people dancing too. I really enjoyed it and the pastor delivered a great message about this year and how close we were to the Second Coming. While in Tauranga and during the ten days I spent with Mary over my holidays I had many Christians pray and prophesy over me. They all had very encouraging and exciting words to give. Many of the words given me centered around how I was on a very narrow path and that God has an awesome calling on my life which I now know or have an idea of. I really needed the encouragement off the other Christians as those first two weeks being Christian were a very difficult time in my life.
On the 5th of January I made my way back to Wellington to finish up working with GP. I had made the decision to finish with GP as I realized that working for them I was worshiping the creation rather than the creator and this was a sin. Plus God was calling me to stay in Taranaki and remain with Mary to be discipled for the next few months. While in Wellington I stayed with my irish friends once again and did two final days of work with GP and they were really cool and understanding of me finishing up. While in Wellington I got a bit carried away though and had the idea put in my head of starting a surf school in the Wairapa. This was not the right time to start this venture and it was a serious blow to my confidence when I realized this. I also hitchhiked down to the South Island for Kaikora Roots Festival during this time. We had sick weather for the festival and I chilled with some of my GP friends for this little trip. Then on the 14th of January I finally made my way back to Taranaki.
I am presently writing a book at the moment with the same title as this blog, Who Says Christianity Isn't Cool. In this book I will go into far more detail of what I have just recounted. I am only going to quickly summarize the three months of being a Christian in this blog also. Basically I have been on an incredible journey. It has been extremely difficult at times for example at one stage my parents and a lot of my friends thought I was in a cult and as a result I had the head of the Irish Embassy in Auckland calling me in early February to see if I was alright. As difficult as the journey has been at times it has been the best three months of my life. Over the last month I have come out of the valley and entered into Gods glory living by faith. Kingdom living is becoming a reality daily and it is awesome! I have attended a week of the supernatural in which I was trained in the gifts of the Holy Spirit by Len Butler and Rodney Francis. This was incredible training and I am truely blessed to have been given the opportunity to have attended this. In my three months as a Christian I have seen a number of miracles, people being healed by faith and I have both received and given prophesies ( some of which have already been fulfilled). To say Christianity is cool is an understatement. God has blessed me with many gifts with one of my favorites being prophetic dancing as I love dancing. I have had encounters with angels and demons, I have had visions of heaven and hell and I have to enter into spiritual warfare daily. Once you become a Christian who fully trusts in God and lives by faith all of the above become common occurrences.
Just over a week ago I moved into my friend Pauls house. He is a young Christian who I first met six weeks ago at The Wave Church in Opunake. He is a farm manager and I am now working partially with him doing a bit of relief milking and whole lot of cooking. I have been doing odd jobs to keep me going over the past few months including, relief milking, painting and labouring to mention a few. I lived with Mary for three months in whole and she has been an amazing blessing upon my life. I am planning on leaving NZ to head to Perth in May. Right now though I'm not sure how long I will be in Perth for. It could be a month or it could be eight months. I'm simply waiting on God to reveal his plan. I do know that after Perth I will be returning to Ireland and I cannot wait to see my family and friends. I now know what Gods calling on my life is. I will share this with you all in my book along with the awesome visions that God has given me. One thing I will say is that Church is the people and not the building. The sooner all the denominations are smashed by the Holy Spirit the better. God has given me a vision of Church being a number of Christians sitting on their surfboards worshipping him. I hope you all enjoyed reading this blog and I look forward to sharing all the above experiences in far more detail in the book that I am presently writing. Blessings of peace and love.
- comments
Sheelah Gedye Awesome to get such a great picture of where you're at!! Miss you heaps man, praying for you everyday xx