A Change in the Wind …

Well, it’s been a looooong time since I felt I had anything to write or say on the Wind Farm, so I did what I’d been taught … if you have nothing to say, say nothing.

I’m still not sure if i have much to say, but I have felt motivated to migrate the Wind Farm from one core framework to another in order to make it more user-friendly from my end of things, and hopefully from yours as well.

I’ll be doing some work on the design of the site over the next few weeks and then we’ll see where that leads us.

Kerry

Can You Drink the Cup?

“We need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow is also the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness. Indeed, we need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.”

From “Can You Drink the Cup?” by Henri Nouwen (p.56)

A “Slipstream Time”

I’m guessing you’ve noticed, but I’ve kind of had to let things go quiet here for a while as I”ve found myself in a season of business opportunity that’s unprecedented for Green Tree Ministries (the Wind Farm’s parent organisation).

We started Green Tree Ministries as very specifically a prophetic ministry. But over the years it’s becoming blatantly obvious that God was evolving us into a full-blown communications ministry, designed to work with and serve both Christian and commercial interests. As a result, over the last six months or so, and especially the last two or three, we’ve seen so many clear “God opportunities” come our way to develop into areas that is helping to keep us on or near the bleeding edge of communication, it’s just not funny.

By way of observation, something I’ve noticed about prophetic people in particular and Christians in general, is that they don’t or know how to, or even want to slow their lives down. And worse yet, out of their hectic pace, so many of these prophetic people keep speaking!  I’m in a season that is most certainly extremely hectic at the moment, but at least I’ve learned enough to just “shut up” until I can quiet myself long enough to hear something from Heaven worth saying!

In the meantime, it’s been “head down, and bum up” as my Dad would say, to stay on course through this “slipstream time” in God. What I mean by slipstream time is that rare time where God sweeps by you, and presents so much to you in doing so. As a result, His “movement” stirs up the atmosphere and, if you’re willing and ready, you can step into that and He’ll clear a path for you to move more rapidly, and go even further, with far less effort than you normally ever experience.

Well, that’s where I am right now … in the slipstream. But it’s a different one. This one is about business, service and provision rather than contemplative quietness (which I dearly miss). I’m looking forward to much quieter personal times ahead, but for now, it’s very much a time of “nose to the grindstone” to keep up with what God is doing with us, so forgive me if the posts here at the Wind Farm continue to be few and far between for a while longer.

Wisdom from the Desert …

The Elder was asked by the Novice, “How can a man remain faithful to the end?”

The Elder drew two lines in the sand some distance apart and answered …

“There is nothing outside these two points. There is no twenty years ahead of you. There is only ever the present moment with God and this present day. So each day if it comes you begin as if were your first day on earth and live it as if it were your last day on earth.”

The Wonder of Grace

This is the secret of peace, after committing a fault. What is past is past. And if we accept the consequences, while bracing our will, we can be sure that God will know how to draw glory even from our faults. Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity, for the saint knows how to find God in everything, in spite of human appearances. Once your will is sincerely “good,” then don’t worry…

In all that we do, and at every moment, God has ordained an exact balance between what we have to do and the necessary strength to do it; and this we call grace. Our part is to bring ourselves into line with grace.

God uses all the horrors of this world for an infinitely perfect end, and always with an infinite calm. It is part of his plan that we should feel the blows and experience the wounds of life: but more than anything else he wants us to dominate them by virtues of faith, hope and charity, and so live on his level. It is these latter which will raise us up to him, and then we shall share in his calm, and in the highest part of our being.

from Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart, a French Carthusian

A Thought About Contentment

“There cannot be anything great in us in the sight of God except our passive endurance.

Therefore let us think of it no more, let us leave the care of our sanctification to God who well knows how to effect it. It all depends on the watchful care, and particular operation of divine Providence, and is accomplished in a great measure without our knowledge, and even in a way that is unexpected, and disagreeable to us.

Let us fulfill peacefully the little duties of our active fidelity, without aspiring to those that are greater, because God does not give Himself to us by reason of our own efforts. We shall become saints of God, of His grace, and of His special providence.

He knows what rank to give us, let us leave it to Him, and without forming to ourselves false ideas, and empty systems of sanctity, let us content ourselves with loving Him unceasingly, and in pursuing with simplicity the path He has marked out for us, where all is so mean and paltry in our eyes, and in the estimation of the world.”

Jean Pierre de Caussade, S.J.

The Ebb & Flow of Life in the Spirit

It is one of the paradoxes of God’s nature: He is constant, and yet He works seasonally. Our humanity has trouble dealing with such a concept. Everything the eternal God does is seasonal. In the natural, He created four seasons to guide the earth through times of sowing, reaping, working, and rest; the same holds true in the spiritual realm. But for some reason, most churches strive desperately to find a perfect balance. They want to be consistent and balance teaching and worship, the Word and the Spirit.

God, however, rejects that notion of balance. His Spirit ebbs and flows in our lives. There are times when we flow in the Word of God, and times when we flow in the Spirit. Our job is to see what God is doing and respond to Him in it. If He is revealing mysteries through Scripture, than we need to focus strongly on the Bible. If He is unveiling things through the gifts and work of the Holy Spirit, then we need to run with that.

We cannot live in a continuous flow of the Spirit. It’s unnatural. For every flow, there must be ebb. For every high tide, there is a low tide. When we are ebbing in the Spirit, God brings us to the constancy of His Word. That Word then underpins our next season in the Spirit—God uses the ebb to teach us about our next breakthrough. What we do in the low tide of the Spirit is absolutely vital to the next flow God wants to bring us into. He sees both the ebb and the flow as a way for Him to lead us.

Continue reading

Hack Attempt

Over the past two weeks we have seen a progressive increase in attempts to hack both this site and the Storm Harvest site, which both reside on the same server.

After exhaustive testing, we have been able to identify that it is our commenting system that is being exploited by some unscrupulous person offshore, in an effort to crash the server and to steal and/or destroy all our data.

Even though I had brought the commenting system back online earlier on after adding some additional security measures, it seems that it remains unsafe for now. Please be patient. I’ll bring it back online as soon as possible.

Kerry

Continue reading