A Season of Lights - Day 2 - Cycles of Life
by David Demian
 
I tried to encourage myself but inside I felt terrible.  As I flew back from the Montreal gathering, I rehearsed in my mind the events of the previous night. 

The gathering had exceeded my expectations – was this Quebec?  From the first meeting, there was an open heaven and we worshiped freely for hours with joyful exuberant faith and deep intimacy.  
 
Prior to the final meeting, a discerning team of leaders met to pray and share together.  A number of us had the same word:  God wants to “betroth” the church of Quebec; to put a ring on her finger and declare “she is mine”. 
 
We were so excited by this revelation that we quickly began to discuss what we could do to represent this covenant prophetically for the people in the gathering.  It was late in the afternoon, and the stores were closing so there was no time to buy anything.  One of the artists at the gathering had painted a picture during worship that spoke of bridal intimacy so we decided to give a small digital print of it to each person.  All our plans seem to be coming together. 
 
As the worship began that evening, my heart was filled with excitement and anticipation. I could feel the Lord’s pleasure over the church of Quebec. 
 
½ hour passed and the worship was enjoyable but something was missing.  Another ½ hour and the resistance was becoming palpable.  The worship team was trying to find the path to the presence of God we had been experiencing in the other meetings.  But we weren’t connecting.  And so we continued worshipping waiting for the Lord to reveal what to do next.
 
Another ½ hour passed and still no breakthrough.  As I prayed, the Lord showed me the image of David dancing before the ark with all his might.  It reminded me of an amazing breakthrough we had the night before when after a similar “tough” start, a sovereign cry had emerged from the younger generations that broke the whole gathering through to a new level of abandonment in corporate worship. 
 
I conferred with the worship leaders and then addressed the crowd.  I shared the picture of King David worshipping and exhorted, especially the younger generation, to come as they had the night before and release themselves in abandonment before the Lord.  The band started playing a rousing chorus and young people obediently streamed to the front and began dancing wildly.
 
And… nothing… the heaviness in the atmosphere didn’t lighten – in fact it got worse.  So we conferred as leaders and decided to stop the worship and wait in silence to see if the Lord would grant us the grace to complete His purposes for the evening.  Like Moses in Exodus 33, we knew we could not continue unless His presence would go with us.
 
I wish I could say God spoke and everything was fulfilled but that didn’t happen.  It seemed God was more determined to teach us a lesson than redeem His purposes for the night.   After waiting in silence for another ½ hour I returned to the stage and opened my heart in repentance with the congregation.  Because I had known what the Lord wanted to do, and was so eager that He would have the pleasure of “marrying Quebec”, like Uzzah reaching out to steady the ark when the oxen stumbled (2 Samuel) I too had tried to “help God” and protect His purposes.  What the Lord wanted that night had been lost.
 
As I recalled the events of the previous night, I was filled with remorse.  The Lord also showed me how not only had I erred in trying to “push” the worship along but I had also wrongly handled the discernment time with the leaders. When we shared our hearts we were all so overcome by the intensity of the Lord’s love and desire for the church of Quebec, that we just raced ahead with our plans.  We never even asked Him how He wanted to “propose” to His beloved church
 
 It was a costly but valuable lesson to learn.
 
The Rest of the Story
A month or so later I was blessed to be among the believers of Newfoundland and Labrador in a provincial gathering in Gander.  Once again, the tangible presence of God was with us from the very first chords of the worship the first evening. 
 
Throughout the gathering the Lord kept speaking about new beginnings.  “Winter is passed, spring has come!” was declared; different people shared they were having dreams about babies. By the last day God revealed prophetically He was handing them a newborn baby: a new vision and renewed hope for the church in the province.  Together the believers stood to receive this sacred trust and to covenant with the Lord to wait on Him and commit their lives to fulfilling His purposes for Newfoundland and Labrador.
 
On the final night, a leader from Saskatchewan stood to share how God had placed a great burden on his heart for Newfoundland and Labrador ever since he met some people from there at the One Heart gathering.  When he heard the call for the gathering, he immediately knew he was to come. As he shared his burden with some pastors and leaders in his city of Saskatoon, unanimously they felt that God was saying that He wanted to marry the church of Newfoundland and Labrador at He was asking them, as a representation of the church in Saskatchewan, to buy the wedding ring for Him!  The church leaders bought a beautiful pure gold wedding band and sent it, along with scrolls of scripture, bound by gold rings, for each person at the gathering.
 
I was amazed.  Neither this man nor the leaders in Saskatchewan knew anything about what had transpired in the Montreal gathering.  And yet what I was witnessing was the very thing the Lord had spoken to us about in Montreal. It was a picture of complete divine redemption. 
 
111 - A Time of New Beginnings
When I watched what happened in Gander, the Lord said to me that He would not let 2007 pass without this situation being redeemed.
 
I believe that before we can be released to the new season that begins with 2008 God wants to free us from the “unfinished business” of the past season.  Many of us have God-given promises and dreams for our lives and relationships that seem to have become “cycles of death” (areas where we cannot attain victory).  But right now I believe the Lord is opening a window of grace to release cycles of life – supernatural redemption to restore things back to how they were meant to be. 
 
One of my friends had a vision where she saw the Lord holding a stopwatch that was stopped as if a race had just been run.  As He pushed the reset button at the top of the stopwatch instead of returning to zero (0:00), as normal, the stopwatch was reset to 111.  The number 1 speaks of new beginnings and 3, the number of the trinity, is a kind of divine completion. 
 
The time of new beginnings is upon us!  In this time of rededication let us position ourselves by faith to call forth divine cycles of life into our lives.  Let’s make this declaration together.
 
Lord I know that you are the Mighty Redeemer, the God who makes all things new.  I thank you for releasing Your cycles of divine life and redemption to counter the cycles of death the enemy has placed in my life.  I believe and wait expectantly to see the supernatural sovereign move of Your hand in my life and circumstances.  In Jesus name I pray, Amen!  
 
All my love
 
David