Isaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

The Prince of Peace, Peace has come.

This past week leading up to Christmas I have been reflecting on a lady that I led to the Lord while visiting St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa.

As I was kneeling in the front of the Cathedral to pray a lady came and stood next to me, looked at me and then proceeded to get on her knees. I could sense that she wasn’t used to praying but I was not ready for the beautiful encounter with Jesus that would follow. I turned to her and immediately became so overcome with Love from the father for her that I felt deeply moved with emotion. In the midst of this stirring of love I felt the Holy Spirit show me insight into what is going on in her life, the abusive relationship she just got out of after her divorce, the pain she is experiencing as both her mother and sister is dying from Cancer, the deep heaviness that she is carrying alongside thoughts of suicide and a sense of needing to go on for the sake of her little daughter. I then felt the Spirit say that he wants to lead her into His “unforced rhythms of Grace”.

Completely shocked at what I was experiencing I proceeded to tell her all about how Jesus loves her, how He sees her, how He knows what she is going through and then told her all that I was shown. As I am sharing this she started crying, the burden of the suffering was heavy on her. I got out my phone and read Matthew 11 from the Message to her and told her all about what Jesus did on the cross and that he wants to take this heaviness off her and give her a peace from which she will find freedom. After a moment of her just crying she looked up at me with this wonder in her eye and said: “I want to know this Jesus that cares for me so well”. I proceeded to lead her into a prayer of forgiveness and asked the Holy Spirit to come and breathe new life into her and for Jesus to come and lift this burden off her. Immediately her countenance changed, she looked happier, she was breathing deeply and said: “what is this lightness I am feeling, what is this peace inside of me”. Such a beautiful encounter with the Prince of Peace. A lady from Australia, having never set foot in a church wakes up that morning with a sense of urgency that she needs to find a church, gets into a taxi and the taxi drives her to the Cathedral where she walks in and sees me kneeling and in front of the altar, decided to just imitate what she sees me doing and sitting on the steps in front of the altar she encounters and received the greatest gift you could ever receive, the Prince of Peace.

How beautiful is this gift we get to celebrate this Christmas? The Birth the Jesus, God coming into man, not just knowing man and our suffering from afar, but assuming our humanity he took onto himself all the hardships of humanity by becoming a baby. The creator, vulnerable and dependant on His Creation. Man touching God. It was the birth of this baby, the manifestation of a peace which destroys chaos, that aligned man back with God and declared to all that is not as it should be in creation that its restoration is afoot. This baby, the perfect expression of Gods love.

This Christmas I pray that you are inspired by the message of Jesus, a message of Good Hope to the divorcee, to the suicidal, the addicted, to the outcast, to the marginalised, to the abused and even for those for whom it would seem like all is well in the world. Jesus came for everyone.

Merry Christmas

PEACE HAS COME

A son, friend and lover of grace, Israel is a graduate from Bethel church in Redding, California and former member of the Community of St Anselm under the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is passionate about teaching people about the healing power of God and demonstrating the love of the father through it. He has taken a message of Good hope to various nations and is currently based in London.