BY DANIELLE EARLE
It’s been a few months since we had Dave Fellingham and the Pursuing His Presence team ministering to us. As we start a new year, it is good to look back and remember all God has done and is doing in us, and to let that inspire us as we look ahead. Pursuing God’s presence is a lifelong adventure, and so I wanted to share two more testimonies from that time to encourage you in your walk with our Father who loves us and loves us to be in His Presence!
ALICIA JERREAT
I’ve struggled a lot in the last few years with feeling ‘overlooked’: being in the shadows/background, feeling as though I am not good enough, that I have nothing of value to offer. Whether it’s as a friend, serving, stepping out in new areas, whatever – it is a lie that I’ve been fighting for many years that never seems to quite go away. These lies have held me back from stepping out, skewed my perspective of how God and other people see me. They have challenged my sense of belonging, my own worth and my own personality. This last season has had a fair few challenges and I have been struggling with my purpose here in this city and not hearing God’s voice clearly, feeling uncertainty in decisions and whether I am in the right place doing the right things.
At the PHP conference on the Saturday I encountered the Holy Spirit in a very strong way and responded.
I remember hearing others around me being prayed and prophesied over and I wanted God to speak into my battles and struggles through someone else too. Someone briefly prayed for me but I was very much left alone with God. My time with God was refreshing and great but I was very frustrated with God as I felt abandoned and ignored in my struggles. On Sunday I stepped out for prayer again and the same thing happened. I started to question why, when I needed some input and clarity so badly, was God withholding it from me?
The next day during a conversation however, something clicked. Someone reminded me about a gift God had given me and how maybe that was where God wanted me to step out. Suddenly I realised that God had been speaking to me for months about this in small ways, like pieces of a puzzle, and I now had the picture of how all these pieces fit together. I wasn’t being overlooked by God! He had been speaking gently to me and working on my heart through my frustrations and battles.
So while I may not have received any prophetic words or words of knowledge from the Horsham team, and certainly life wasn’t ‘solved’, their visit brought an opportunity for me to engage deeper with God and a realisation that I do not need someone else to tell me what God is saying. I had been hearing from God and I was just waiting on the overall picture to sort out the pieces that didn’t make sense by themselves. It has helped me to have patience for the struggles still ongoing as He is faithful and He will continue to speak to me.
God does love to bless us by speaking into our lives through others though and since that weekend, I’ve actually had 14 prophetic words brought to me by my Trinity family, reaffirming and challenging me. Sometimes there is one life-changing word/weekend/experience but mostly God loves to use us as a family to change each other and to grow together.
SIAN IVES
During the week the Horsham team were here, Jarrett brought a word at the prayer meeting about how he felt there were people who were feeling like they hadn’t connected with the Holy Spirit lately, but He was going to do a new thing in those people. I can’t remember the exact words, but I just felt like it connected with me at the time!
Then in the week following that, I felt like God started to speak to me in the small things, through my day to day. On the Saturday morning [of the Pursuing His Presence conference] I saw two pictures that I felt God speak to me through:
The first one was of the sun rising over the water and I thought how even with a small glimpse of the sun, the water started to reflect His creation. I felt God saying: “I’m the one who shines and you reflect Me”. We just need to soak Him up, and as we go into our day to day we will continue to shine and reflect Him.
The second one was as I drove to the PHP conference – there was a mist over the road ahead of me. The sun still shone through it but there was still this really thick mist and I felt like it was like the Holy Spirit, thick around us. We can see the mist but can’t touch or feel it, but it’s there and this mist is gentle and as it’s feeding God’s earth, watering it, it mirrors how the Holy Spirit is gently sustaining and feeding us. We can’t mould the Holy Spirit, we just need to let the Spirit mould us and gently do His thing.
At the meeting as we worshipped I felt like my hands were dripping with dew, and it felt like the Holy Spirit was doing that exact thing to us. His Presence was thick and drenching us; feeding us and pouring Himself into us and we will “drip Him”, and the overflow will be onto others.
I was battling with whether to bring these pictures, and when I finally got the courage to, there wasn’t enough time!
Then I felt like what Dave Fellingham brought throughout the meeting was totally bringing those pictures to life! He spoke from Psalm 80 where it repeats three times saying ‘make your face shine down upon us’ (NLT) like how God had spoken to me through the sun that morning and he went on with the words “for some of you the Holy Spirit is like a mist in the room gently doing its thing” and that was what I had felt and even written down before he brought it!
I found that so encouraging and affirming, that even though I didn’t get to bring those words, that God still spoke to me so clearly and that He still made His encouragement known!
