Your stories of God’s intervention
A petition to God resulted in a miraculous move
My husband and I are from the USA, lived in London, but recently moved to Burundi for work. I was very particular about the building I wanted us to live in in the capital, Bujumbura. We had lived there before and felt very connected to the landlords. But it is an extremely desirable place to live, so there were no apartments available. When we lived in the building before, we were on the second floor and every time we talked about moving back, I could only see us in the top-floor apartment. It was my dream to live there, as there are gorgeous views and it is bright and light. It is perfect for hosting, and I felt prophetically that it was significant as it is one of the tallest buildings in the neighbourhood, so I could pray for the community from a great vantage point. We prayed in January 2023 when visiting Burundi, and while we were there a flat in the building amazingly became available. However it was on the back side of the building, and those flats are really dark. They are small and not good for hosting church. My husband felt it was incredible that a flat had opened up, but I was sure I didn’t want to live in that apartment. In the past I have had a tendency to dip into dark places, and my environment makes such a difference to my mental health so I knew to be in a small, dark flat would not be great for me. My husband still felt we should take it, but we enquired about the top-floor flat too. We were told a family had moved in who would be there long term, so we couldn’t consider it. We resolved to take the one that was available, and then wait for the family to move out eventually. I was sure it wasn’t right, so decided to petition the Lord to make the top flat available.
We planned the move for October 2023 and by the May the top-floor flat was still not free. I had to start packing our belongs on 1 June, and was dreading it. This was our 18th move as a married couple, and I had hoped it would be our final one for a while. I didn’t want to move into a place and then have to move again. I kept going back to the Lord, and asking for mercy. On 29 May I had my final day at the bookshop where I worked in London. A pastor came into the bookshop, and I told him it was my last day as we were moving to Burundi. He said: “Oh I have a prophetic word for you – Psalm 118:5-7, go look it up.” I thought: “That is hilarious, I don’t need to look it up as it is one of my life verses.” I immediately knew what it meant, as it says: “The Lord has heard my cry of distress, he has come to me as a father, and he has brought me to a bright and spacious place.” In my journal the day before I had written: “God please don’t sentence me to the dark and cluttered flat, please bring me to the bright and spacious flat.” I felt it was a confirmation that God was going to give us the flat. I went home and stuck the verse on the fridge, and told everyone, even my atheist next-door neighbours, that it was going to happen. The next day in the middle of dinner with our neighbours, I got a text from the Burundian landlords, telling us the family in the top-floor flat wanted to move to the bottom one as they didn’t like the balcony with their small children, so it was ours if we wanted it! I was screaming with joy! We have now moved, and I had my friend Leah paint me a canvas for our sitting room saying: “He has brought me into a bright and spacious place.” God is so good and he cares about the details!
Carley
Wellness through worship
I am the mother of a seven-month-old baby who was waking every 45 minutes to an hour at night. I was very sleep deprived and at the end of my reserves emotionally and physically. I was pinning my hopes on starting some gentle sleep training to try and reclaim some sleep, but was waiting for my husband to agree on a start date as he wasn’t keen on the idea. In the meantime, my dad fell ill while he was staying with us, and ended up in hospital for four weeks which was very stressful. I then fell out with my husband, so the disconnection between us felt really hard. Everything was bleak, and I had limited ability to muster up strength and courage in myself. On a Monday I was texting a friend as a cry for help, explaining how desperate I felt and that there was no hope of my husband changing. I felt like the circumstances of life were all against me. In the act of writing the message I saw just how dark my thinking was, and how shaded I was from the truth and the love of God. As a response to the place I was in, I felt the only proactive thing I could do was worship. Walking down the street I starting singing out loud the song ‘Goodness of God’: “All my life you have been faithful, all my life you have been so, so good. With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.” Also, the last verse of Psalm 23 has always been a verse that God has spoken to me – that I can be sure that “goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”. So, I was declaring this truth over my life and circumstances as well. By the end of my worship session, I could already feel my soul lifted out of its pit to a place of hope again, even though nothing had changed in my circumstances. Fast forward to four days later, we started the sleep training on the Wednesday night and my baby picked it up straight away. It felt like a miracle that she learned to sleep on her own. The thing I learned through this was that it was so dangerous for me to be led solely by my emotional state, rather than allowing the superior reality of faith, and God’s love and kindness, to dictate my wellbeing.
Ellie
My ‘Jesus dungarees’!
I was thinking about getting some denim dungarees because I had a friend who had some, and we used to make videos together. I thought it would look cool if we were both wearing dungarees. She had blue denim ones, so I wanted to get black/grey denim ones. I looked for some, but they were so out of my budget (including ones from Topshop, the brand that fits me best). At the time I was being supported financially while working for a church. I think I must have randomly told God that I would love some black/grey dungarees, but I then forgot about the request. Not long after, I was in Birmingham city centre doing some work. In the lunch break I had a sense from God that I should go to the Cancer Research charity shop. It was one street away. As I walked in, on the first rail in front of me was a pair of black/grey denim dungarees from Topshop in my size! I didn’t even bother trying them on, as I knew they were from Jesus for me. They were £6, a bargain, and I have worn them and loved them ever since – they are my ‘Jesus dungarees’!
Helena
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