The Mailbox
Page Prewitt recently received these two excellent letters from Great Britain, from which we are printing excerpts.
Dearest Page,
…I am beginning to appreciate for myself having a strong band of His people around me for support and have been thrilled and deeply moved to experience the support of Chris, Meryl, and everybody at the conference in handling the situations there have been with Kim and Faye, in guiding and supporting me as a mother where I have been lacking, and in overcoming (faithing through) the areas of sin, weakness or delusion in my own life.
I am so grateful to God that He has brought me to a new level of trust in all of you, as well as Himself, and continues to be so good to me and bring me on, though I deserve nothing. I hate it that I have been in such a long, long tunnel of darkness, blindness and sin, and been so slow, blind and rebellious even after "seeing" things, and want to put all of that behind me now and make rapid strides so that God’s Life can flow out to others.
I can end up feeling crushed, condemned and hopeless if I dwell on the past, but I am saying instead that God has His purposes and can turn even this to good and use it for His glory, and thank Him that at least I am seeing more how wrong I was and not thinking I am all right as I am. During the conference, I realized how I had been seeing myself as this "sensitive person" and wanted there and then to be totally rid of any such trace of independent believing. I told everyone straight away that I was not nice or supersensitive, or anything of the kind, that I am a new person, the old is DEAD, and I am REAL.
One of the most valuable "visual aids" that cropped up was the concept of "virtual reality,"–that people can live in all sorts of different "realities" very real to them (each one specially set up to suit them), but in fact they are dying without knowing it, just like the people playing the virtual reality games and not eating or moving about, etc. There is only one reality in truth- God’s ultimate reality which Brett Burrows made very clear to us. It was brilliant.
I finally saw how the symptoms of clinical depression, feeling as though I was bound to be that sort of person because it was the way I was made, and probably had been since birth-I saw how that was my virtual reality, and not God’s reality, even though it feels and seems so real and powerful.
So now I am committed to believing that it’s Christ living, and His Life in me is the only real one, even when it feels and looks like the exact opposite is true. One day on a walk in the village, I saw some cattle standing knee-deep in muddy water and muck (and a calf with them), so immobile and "at home" there, and I saw how I had been just the same in accepting and staying in sickness and immobility-and wanted OUT of id I Praise God. I am saying
who I am and what I believe now as often as it takes, and keeping in touch with others. Bless you for continuing to have faith in me. I think of you and embrace you.
Love,
Jill Rogers England
Dear Page,
I think of you often. I am beginning to really see what it is to be a self for others. The focus is changed from oneself and soul reactions to the other person and how to bring them to know and live from who they are. In so many situations recently your voice rings in my ears on body, soul and spirit, no independent self, tuning out the noise of soul reactions and I think, "so that’s what she meant." I can see it now. I understood it before, but now I’m really understanding it.
Life is wonderful, Page. I don’t care how it feels, life is wonderful. It is a joy to my heart to watch someone getting clear and walking out of the darkness into the light. I love how God works things out. I don’t always like each step of the way, but I love how He fits the pieces all together.
I also know that some people are long-term projects and our job is to be available for Jesus Christ to live through us however He chooses-whether we look good, bad, smart or crazy. That’s really not the point. The point is, Christ is being for that person through us in the way the person needs it at that time, no matter the human cost.
I’m reading Holy Spirit Possession by Florence Udell at the moment and I’ve read Rees Howells Intercessor a couple of times. She talks about the Holy Spirit possessing us as if it were another spiritual stage after salvation. I understand it as Christ living life as me in the form of the Holy Spirit, no other spiritual process takes place other than the continual renewing of my mind to a deeper level of conscious awareness of the fact that I am not "just me" but in fact, Christ/Christina. So I’m saying that Holy Spirit possession is Christ living life as me.
Christina Duncan Scotland
Dear K,
I am very disappointed with you that you are not coming to the conference this Easter. I am also sad that the enemy seems to have robbed you of the seed that was sown last autumn.
I may not understand, on a feeling level, your problems with traveling, but I do understand how big a step it seems to be to do what is hard and unknown to us. But the only way you will get over your fear is to do the thing which feels extremely difficult and painful. The negative, our feelings, is absolutely necessary and has to be there. It is our springboard to faith–to getting God into action. When I wasn’t doing very well, prior to last autumn’s conference, there were times when I felt paralyzed by fear of not being able to cope at work. I remember having to say, when getting off the train to work, "because of who I am I can walk up the escalator." I do not know, apart from God, how I got through the last three years at my job. I have been there three years today. It’s truly a miracle, as my performance was so bad because of my unbelief. I didn’t really know it at the time, and didn’t see it clearly then, but I had to experience a lot of pain before I was willing to see that I was believing wrongly about myself. I now see, even though I have known about "no independent self" since 1987, that I am the vessel and Jesus Christ is the operator. In many areas, I did not live from that. It took many years of hearing, absorbing, and exhorting for me to really see. But each stage of growth and learning was necessary and exactly where I was meant to be.
On the financial side, I also have seen God work many miracles. Again, when I have dared to believe the truth and say, "no matter what is going on, I’m believing it’s exactly how it is meant to be, and I have exactly what I need," God does supply my needs. I would not have my own place today, and all the responsibility that goes with it, if I had not dared to trust God and believe, in spite of my fears. I needed some very necessary repair work to be done and knew I couldn’t afford to take out a loan from the bank to do it. My father, who has been as tight as a drum all his life gave each of us this Christmas some of his savings, so he wouldn’t have to pay tax on it. So I’ve got money to do what I need. We are God’s instruments here on earth and when we allow Him to freely flow through us we are allowing Him to release His resources, which are infinite. Even if God had not provided through my father, He would have provided some other way for my needs. The possibilities are endless with God. While we are living from "I can’t", He is powerless. He needs us to say "I feel like I can’t, but because of who I am, Jesus Christ as me, I can." You do not know how God is going to work out your finances in the future. Neither do I. I may be out of a job tomorrow, but then I will deal with it-not before it happens. For today, I’m believing right and doing the next thing.
I don’t know if you have reservations about what we believe and how we operate. All I can say is when I went to my first conference and met the Americans, I thought they were the most un-Christlike people I had ever met. They were loud, brash, wore make-up and very flashy clothes, etc. There was no way I wanted to be like them. But I had to give up "my" view of what Christ was like and how He would act. What kept me hanging around was I knew they knew something that I needed to know and that no other Christians I had come across knew. I knew they had an earthly answer to questions I had for years. Today, I am able to write to my mother and say with conviction that there is an answer to her depression and the fear she lives in every day. It is available if she reaches out to God for it. God will not force Himself on any of us. We are the ones who need to take a step toward Him and He never lets us down. When we are living in the fear and depression, or whatever it is, the step seems like a big chasm we have to cross over. It really isn’t. Satan makes it appear like that
and that’s exactly the negative we need. When we choose to believe right, in spite of the awful hard feelings, and get to the other side, the ground covered does not seem so huge. The transition from darkness to light is in an instant. And the benefits are instant.
I mentioned earlier in this letter that "I" trusted God. I need to clarify this as it’s something I’ve only seen last week when I was feeling extremely panicky and fearful about a financial problem. I was under condemnation because "I" didn’t trust God in the situation to work it all out. I saw that "I" cannot, do not, have the capacity to trust Him. My only capacity is to choose who operates me–Christ or Satan. If I’m believing and choosing Christ to operate me, then my "trusting God" is believing that everything going on is Him.
Forgive my many mistakes. It’s 4:30 AM as I write this. It is not too late to change your mind about the conference. Only you can make that decision.
