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

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.

Just a quick note to let you know that this Saturday’s Breathing Space (quiet day) has been cancelled.

In fact, I’m having to slow down the frequency of these days simply because there are not enough people regularly attending to make it financially viable. If I could afford to do it each month just for myself, I would, but I can’t.

At this stage, the only other Quiet Day for 2008 will be on Saturday 29th November, and then next year’s Quiet Days will only be held once a quarter. More on that later.

It’s interesting to me that the purpose of these days is to give people "breathing space"; an opportunity to intentionally slow down in order to be alone with God in quietness and peace, and yet the consistent reason people have for not been coming is that they are just too busy … and I find that very telling.

In my own life, I realise I am somewhat addicted to noise and turbulence. I hate it, but I struggle to live without it, even when I know doing so will benefit the quality of my life. But the Bible is true in every way, especially as it relates to the Kingdom of God. The King James version of the Bible says that …

"The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."
Matthew 11:12

Now, my good ol’ Pentecostal training would tell me that this is about militantly laying hold of God by violently coming against the devil and his schemes to outdo God. That may be true, but it isn’t what God has been saying to me for some weeks now.

Firstly, what is the Kingdom of God all about?  Well, the apostle Paul says that …

"… the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the (Spirit) Holy Ghost."
Romans 14:17

What Paul is saying is that the Kingdom of God isn’t about stuff. It isn’t about temporal, earthly, natural things. It isn’t about "meat and drink". The Kingdom of God is a life of righteousness, peace and joy when lived in the Spirit!

And Jesus said that this very Kingdom of Heaven is within us, and it is this Kingdom that suffers violence again and again, day in, day out. It suffers violence through the insanity of 21st century life .. that is, the incessant noise, internal turbulence, frentic activity, work demands, family demands, church demands, personal demands, friendship demands, demands you didn’t ask for, go looking for, and demands you didn’t even expect to find. In fact, these are all things that keep us away from our relationship with Jesus!  And yet, I hear God saying that the only response to this is for us to be equally violent in response …. but it is a Kingdom violence I hear Him speaking about.

Here’s some of what Jesus said the violence of the Kingdom looks like …

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Well, it’s been another busy week, but God has been very good to me through a couple of relationships that I honestly did not realise were key to my life, but clearly are. Have you ever had that happen to you?  Some people you’re connected to, are perhaps perceived by you to be on the perifery of your life, but then God uses them to speak deeply and profoundly to you in order to bring a breakthrough.

That’s certainly what happened for me this week, with a man much younger than myself. The arrogance of my age (nearly 45) enabled me to almost write this guy off as having anything of real value to bring to my life, other than to be a work colleague. How wrong I was!

I know of late I’ve made some well intentioned, but ultimately hollow promises to write about some particular topics, but these encounters, the most recent in particular, have set me free in some remarkable ways. So, I promise you, I will write about these things over the next week.

Will you hold me to it?  Good!

Anyway, tomorrow is July’s Breathing Space (our monthly quiet day .. a contemplative prayer experience in the monastic tradition), so I figured if you’re like my close friends Phil and Jeanette Beale, who now live and work in Dubai, and you cannot be with us tomorrow, you might like to conduct your own quiet day at some point in the near future, or even orient your schedule to be with us virtually (mystically) by using the liturgy planned for tomorrow to join us in prayer at the appropriate times.

Let me know if you do. I’d love to hear your feedback.

Grab the PDF here. You’ll be seeing it even before those who attend tomorrow’s Breathing Space!

Oh .. and here‘s some extra resources I’ll be distributing tomorrow to help some newcomers engage with the day.

The Sydney Benedictine Experience ’08 is coming up in November and you are most welcome to join us. I have already registered and am very much looking forward to my return visit to this outstanding retreat weekend.

It is being led by Father Michael King, a precious monk who is Abbot of Australia’s only Anglican Benedictine Abbey in Victoria, and is again being held at the Mount St Benedict Centre in West Pennant Hills. The dates are 21st – 23rd November, and the cost is only $300.00 which includes all meals, accommodation and materials for the weekend.

To get an idea of what last year’s retreat weekend was like, visit here.

In the meantime, download both the flyer and brochure (which includes the registration form), and perhaps we’ll see each other at this year’s Sydney Benedictine Experience.

… you took the time to jump across to my friend Robert Holmes’ website. I have spent a lot of hours redeveloping both the entire back-end and the new template for him and we have just launched the new-look site this afternoon.

Go to www.StormHarvest.com.au and take a look around. I’m pretty pleased with it, I can tell you, but I’d love to hear what you think.

Plus, if you take the time to make the visit to Storm Harvest, you’ll understand why things have been a little quiet at the Wind Farm in recent weeks.

God bless you!

Kerry

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Over the last few years, its become more and more obvious that Green Tree Ministries, the prophetic ministry and training school I founded in 1998, has been evolving into a more fully rounded communications ministry, where the mediums of broadcasting and the Internet are primary areas of function.

For the past year or so, I have acted as the administrator of the Storm Harvest website for my good mate, Robert Holmes. Even though we haven’t been able to travel together in ministry as often as we used to, this has been one of the ways I can contribute to the ongoing development of his work.

In recent months, Rob and another close friend, Phil Beale, have been suggesting that they felt it was God’s pleasure for me to start to develop a webhosting arm to what we do at Green Tree Ministries. To be honest, I’ve resisted the suggestion for some time because I knew the work involved, but in the end, felt it was indeed time to do so.

So, last week, EzyWebsites.com.au was born .. and already we have a number of clients and ministres that have come on-board!

If you run a small business, a ministry, a company or you need a personal website for something like a blog or the like, now you can buy really stable, feature-rich webhosting at very competitive rates. EzyWebsites.com.au might be your answer. 

It’s been quite remarkable to watch how a simple willingness to align with the purposes of God has drawn people to it without even trying. Here’s an idea of who’s come to us already …

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Where on earth has the last month gone to??  I have been under a massive workload; bigger than I’ve known for the longest time, and I am desperate for Breathing Space .. literally!

This Saturday from 10am, you’re invited to join us at Winbourne in Mulgoa for our next quiet day; Breathing Space.

This month, things will be a little different to the norm. We will still enjoy times of structured corporate prayer, but we are going on a "visit to the monastery" in a virtual sense. At some point through the day, we’ll be running the movie Into Great Silence on the big screen in the Chapel where, in three hours, you will experience the silence and power of an entire year of monastic rhythm at the Grande Charteuse, the mother house of the Carthusians.

If you’d prefer to remain in prayer and solitude on the property, feel free. You will not be obliged to watch the movie, but for those who do, the experience will stay with you for a very long time.

Also, I would ask that you bring a simple packed lunch with you this time around with perhaps just a little extra in case any "unexpecteds" join us. While the shared meal is normally a special time, it can also be a "noisy" time, even though it’s shared in silence, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, if you’re able to join us, please let me know by visiting this LINK. You’ll find all the time and address details on the same page.

I hope to share some Breathing Space with you this weekend!

Kerry

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I am away in Brisbane at the moment, teaching at the second of the Australian Prophetic Round Table’s Australian Prophetic Schools. We are at Calvary Family Church in Shailer Park which is based in a local shopping centre. They own half of the entire centre!

Bruce and Joan Sweet are the senior leaders and our hosts, and are wonderful people.

While the number of those attending this week is a little smaller than in Nowra a few months ago, they are very hungry and the feedback has been excellent so far. The daytime teaching sessions and practical workshops have given a great deal of meat to those who have come to learn, while the evening God Encounter meetings have seen God manifest Himself in remarkable and substantial ways.

Today is the last day of the school and I will again be teaching; this time on "Beholding and Becoming: the challenge for every prophet in a fast food world". This will involve sharing a great deal from my own personal journey with all its failures and some its successes, along with a distillation of some of the many things I’ve gleaned from my studies of Christian monasticism over these past couple of years. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Anyway, the Lord has been reminding me that I must finish writing the Reasons and Resonance series, which I will do upon my return. There have been legitimate reasons for why this hasn’t happened before now, but I believe they will help us understand why we need to learn some of the lessons from our book reading.

Pray for me today!  I don’t want to just impact these people. I want God to penetrate their hearts.

Kerry

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This month we decided to move the date for Breathing Space a week earlier to allow some of our regulars to be a part of it, given that one of them is about to leave for a two year posting to Dubai with her husband. To facilitate that, I asked one our regulars, Pauline Loughhead, to lead the morning and midday prayers because I needed to be on-air at Sydney’s 1032 until midday. I was one of the "extras" that arrived in the afternoon, along with my 11 year old daughter who wanted time alone with God.

I hope you enjoy Pauline’s impressions of another excellent time in the presence of God …

Breathing space was a different place for me in May, as I had a part in leading Morning Prayer and the Eucharist and saw things from a totally different perspective. How blessed we are to have Kerry who facilitates with such aplomb while we sit and enjoy God’s presence!

We were seven this month (nine during and after lunch), but for most of the day there were two for me .. just me and my heavenly father.

Having come to a new place in the realisation of the indestructibility of my assurance of God’s love for me during the difficult week in the lead up to Breathing Space, I was in a special place and slipped easily into that place where God speaks into my inner being.

Someone asked me, "how do you hear God speaking to you, is it with words, is it audible?"

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