There it was. It was tucked into the corner of the cramped but cozy spare bedroom of my mom’s apartment, beside the closet. My mom’s ever present Singer Sewing machine circa the 1960’s. The special table it was housed in, was looking older and more worn but still stood solid. The machine itself was still in perfect working order due my mom’s diligent care.
I was visiting my hometown Winnipeg for a week’s holiday as well as to attend the True North conference. It was the year 2010 and there was great expectation regarding this event. As I had not been home for over a year and a half, I was not sure what to expect. There was often mixed feelings and expectations regarding any visit I set out on. So far, this had been a lovely visit. I had shared Thanksgiving dinner with my mom and a sister’s family, feeling at the same time full physically yet also very weepy at being home. I was sitting on the bed in this bedroom just gazing around the room at items, awash in memories of it all.
I looked at the new vest hanging in the closet that the Lord had nudged me to make that I would be wearing to this conference. It had taken me a week to make plus one six hour marathon with a friend to finish it. The Lord had been very clear to build according to the pattern. We had both found, much to our bemusement, that we were having a difficult time in either our ability to read the pattern or that it was the pattern maker’s incompetency at writing the pattern being the issue. It was labelled on the package as being a super easy design and should have taken only a matter of hours to make not over a week. Both of us had great experience sewing but had been in a challenge. In the end, it looked fabulous and I owed my friend a dinner as a reward for having hung in there with me.
We discussed later if there was a lesson to be learned in all that. Yes, indeed there was. One needs to follow instructions exactly. Often, many of us have a lifetime of experience doing many things but perhaps as time has gone by then we have tended to get slack in some things or perhaps have never really done things in the best blueprint manner as was intended. It's very humbling to start each new day as a beginner and about a year ago I purposed this would be my daily wake up goal.
Our heavenly Father has laid out for us in His word His Truth, precepts, laws and commandments. There is certain failure when we do not listen to His wisdom and advice. Things fall apart when they are not constructed properly. My friend and I realized we were requiring greater discernment because if we had been properly attuned, we would have realized early on that the pattern from this company was indeed wrong. If we had pressed into the Lord for His wisdom sooner, we would have tapped into His wisdom and not strived. We could have heard Him give us time-saving advice so we would not be so desperate to follow this manufacture defective pattern. The real question in the end was: Why were our eyes not seeing correctly?
Psalm 119:18 “Open my eyes, that I might behold wondrous things out of your law.”
There are so many things catching our gaze in the world today or our hearing. When we were trying to assemble the pattern pieces, we sewed and ripped until our eyes were burning as we struggled to come into Truth or the right way. So much of what we both knew previously about sewing had to be chucked out and deprogrammed for this one. Perhaps even wrong things that had been written on the program of our minds. Our eyes had to be fully on Him.
In Exodus 33:11, we hear about the Lord speaking to Moses face to face. In verse 13, Moses responded by just wanting to know Him.
Psalm 119:83 TMB – There's smoke in my eyes – they burn and water, but I keep a steady gaze on the instructions you post.”
I started thinking I was needing bifocals by the end of this ordeal. Thankfully the Lord healed my eyes up fully during the 10 hour Burn worship and prayer at this conference. Through the Burn I had been weeping extensively and was already feeling them healing. My heart was leaping much of the time as the Word came forth through the speakers with a consuming desire to embrace His truth. So often today believers are not even reading their Bibles, starving themselves of needed spiritual nourishment. There is no plumbline preventing them from venturing out onto pathways of haywire and deceiving beliefs. Where is wisdom sought to help lead and keep us in rest in Him or on a straight pathway?
Moses desperately sought the face of God to lead a people to freedom. Even though the Lord had preordained him as a deliverer, he still needed to pursue the instructions, the Word Himself. For its all about relationship once again and the journey of the fulfillment of His covenantal promises. How much we all need to burn in our hearts in pursuit of His ways for us personally and our family and future family generations.
The Master Sewer and Pattern Maker Himself must be allowed to weave the dreams and desires of His heart into His people. The golden and multi-colored threads woven together in an eternal expression of New Jerusalem, His glory. Christ in us, the hope of glory.
“And now God is building you, as living stones, into His spiritual temple...”
And so, I smile, gazing at the old faithful sewing machine. The machine my mom created so many clothes for us as children. The machine that repaired so many ripped and tattered things. My mom, almost celebrating her 80th birthday, continues to sew and repair now mostly for her grandchildren. They are the new generation whom she has interceded for as well as their mothers, even before they were even here on the earth. A generation that has had many praying mothers and fathers as well as grandparents. A rich foundation and inheritance sewn into them stitch by stitch, prayer by loving prayer. A linking. Once in a while I can imagine my mom looking up and looking into the distance. Was she seeing that not everyone was in the Kingdom yet? Was she reminding Father of the promise He gave her so long ago?
Isaiah 44:1-4 NLT “But now, listen to me, Jacob my servant, Israel my chosen one. The Lord who made you and helps you says: O Jacob, my servant, do not be afraid. O Israel, my chosen one, do not fear. For I will give you abundant water to quench your thirst and to moisten your parched fields. And I will pour out my Spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank.”
My heart and mind as of late, are often a swirl, pondering and remembering the zeal my mom had to see revival in this nation. My own heart being set ablaze anew the last couple years with renewed hope to continue to see this nation changed as He showed me in a vision in Israel in 2019. If I look at the news and the media with the wrong eyes, I am often overwhelmed at the sheer task at hand by His people to be atmosphere changers. If I look at those of us that consider us belonging to Him, well, there again I am overwhelmed at the state of change and healing He has us all in not to mention a constant sifting and sorting of what I actually agree or disagree with. Or who. Some days I liken it all to shockwaves of earthquakes mixed in with the grief of much and being washed quickly away in the waters of His presence.
I stood on the private property of someone for the first time earlier this year in absolute shock at the terrain so converging with a very big promise He gave me upon leaving Manitoba in 2007. I heard the heart of the Father and what He wanted to do there for many. It was so much like the above Isaiah 44. Recently, I have been reading through Rees Howells Intercessor book again along with a few other books that have come across my path that weave together like hands going into the gloves of a garment change. (Not just jackets or pants or dresses but also of the gloves and shoes of renaissance.) Aware Father is gazing at me intently. "You need to get this Daughter. To understand."
Reflecting on a picture of my mom's old machine this morning sent me back into this blog I had started in 2010. Mom passed away into glory three years ago just before the North Battleford meetings of 2018. More than anything, mom prayed for revival to come to Canada. I was shocked with a series of shocks I knew that Father was causing to occur. We are it. My group. My generation. He is looking to many of us to come to Him for the solutions to the upheaval in the globe today. Many of those before me have gone on to glory in an increasing way and many still here are transitioning into huge end time up grades from the Lord. How very aware I am of that and in no way am I able to do what He is asking. Not in my own strength or wisdom. He says time is so very short and I have so many things to do. There is a definite tension of much being sewn together.
So, on November 6, I walked away from my difficult job after months of Him speaking to take His hand and begin to walk on water in total faith with Him in a new way. He created the job out of nowhere and now it was time for it go. The day I had the full revelation dawn within was a day I wept in absolute joy at His faithful leading, provision and strength yet again. Its going to be okay. A dear friend said that I had received my dignity and respect back. Yes. Its back. And so is the water to walk on with my Bridegroom holding out His hand to grab hold of. If He came back tomorrow, would He find faith in the earth? And so, I am letting Him sew me more secure into the tapestry of this present rising dawn. Its arising...
Malachi 3:23-24 TLV
"Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of Adonai. He will turn the hearts of fathers to the children, and the hearts of children to their fathers - else I will come and strike the land with utter destruction."
