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I do not want to anticipate the result of my latest struggles yet, however, I can tell you that I started to see that getting to know God’s thoughts on everything often comes from listening to the Holy Spirit during our more silent times of the day. I got a confirmation of my deliberations from T. Austin Sparks whose article on prayer I am going to mention further below again. (1) Alas, it is so easy to get sucked into the busyness and distractions of our everyday life that we usually only feel a bit uneasy when we are confronted with some unexpected “thing” or an unexpected “someone” in the middle of the day. We might not know where this discomfort has come from, but God knows. Whether He shows us the reason for IT through Scriptures, in dreams, or visions – as I have said before, that is not important. What is important, though, is that God wants to tell us something in order to set us free.

To start with, I want to share another vision with you which caused me quite a headache recently. Waiting on God for the explanation and interpretation of the things seen has never been easy for me. But I know it does not make sense to try to interpret anything on my own as it leads me in the wrong direction. Two days ago in the evening I spent time in prayer with the Lord. After some time of resting, I found myself standing on Jesus’ left side on the top of a mountain. It was rather dark there as well. Looking ahead of us, I saw a deep and narrow canyon which, though it could have been angst-inducing, appeared to have been illuminated by a soft and warm light from beneath. Nothing about this light was uncomfortable. As the Lord asked me whether I wanted to go there, I declined, though. ‘Why leaving the heights for another earthly distraction as beautiful as it might seem to be at the moment?’ These were my initial thoughts.

Jesus pointed me to a short bridge that led over the canyon. In only a few steps you could reach the other side if you dared to tread on this narrow, but richly decorated woodwork. Even a hand railing was on both sides (which was rarely the case in my former more frightening visions). As we walked the solid construction, I threw a short glance to the bottom of the narrow canyon. There seemed to be a hustle and bustle under some golden lights. It dawned on me that there was something familiar about it. Nonetheless, I got distracted soon since what I saw right before us made me stop immediately. Having arrived on the other side of the mountain, right in front of us was a small gray hill. On this hill there seemed to be an impenetrable forest which was ‘darker than dark’. Inky blackness, indeed, you could not even discern the trees. My first thought was, ‘Oh no, I do not want to go there!’ because I assumed this darkness might announce another ‘dark’ trial ahead of me.

Considering that the Holy Spirit always tells us “the things that are to come” (see John 16:13), I usually get warned about trials ahead of me through “walking on burning coals”, for instance, which indeed turned out a ‘fiery’ trial soon afterwards, or through getting attacked by foreigners with intent to kill. The latter has sometimes been a warning of an oncoming attack by evil spirits, sometimes even through those close to me, through neighbors, or at other times through commenters on the net. When such things eventually happen, I am reminded of the dream or the vision, and thus I know that all things happen according to God’s plan.

Back to the vision. Jesus who knew I was afraid of the darkness asked me whether I dared to enter with Him. Not without hesitation and always keeping very close to Jesus, I found myself soon in the middle of nowhere with Him. It was so dark that nothing could be discerned anymore. No Jesus, no me, no tree. I felt Him on my right side, though. Getting more and more accustomed to the darkness, it seemed to me that His presence had become ‘stronger’ as well. Although I could not make out the outlines of anything, still, my fear began to decrease. Suddenly He told me to turn to the right side of where He was standing. There it looked like the dawn of a new morning as a gray or blue light rose from the depth, coming higher and higher up the mountain, almost reaching the point where we were standing. Trying to make out the source of the bright light, I heard a voice saying, “The Morning Star…” At that moment Jesus asked me to look back to where we had come from. I cannot say how amazed I was to see that there were no trees behind us anymore. In fact, there was no forest around at all! Instead, as the light got brighter, I realized that the former small hill we were standing on was growing upward under our feet quickly. Looking down on that little bridge over the former neatly illuminated canyon, the light that had been there below appeared to have been absorbed by the much brighter and vaster light that shone down on it from above because the brighter light illuminated everything that came into view. Everything. Everywhere.

Suddenly Jesus said, “We have arrived.” The movement upwards had stopped while I was confronted with something I had never seen before. Trying to describe it is almost impossible. I got an impression that this object might have been a ‘door’ although it did not look like anything I had been familiar with. Its shape reminded me of a perfectly framed oyster shell while the material it was made of looked like light-pink and white compact cotton wool that was glittering softly. Although it seemed to have been a door of sorts, there was no door opener of any kind. Turning to Jesus, I was wondering what to do with that. He pointed a threshold out to me and sat down while the ‘door’ was in His back. When I had joined Him sitting on this threshold or doorstep, I saw a very long and bright path before us. I would have really loved to go there as it seemed so comfortable to walk on. But alas, the view to the left side was completely hidden from that path by a non-stop sandy wall. You could always only behold the area on the right. Hmm…  🙄

Jesus asked me whether I wanted to look into the opposite direction instead. As strange as it might seem, you could look around this ‘door’ which did not belong to any visible building of sorts. On the other side there was a huge but lower area with green mountains and many pointed green cliffs which looked a bit strange to me. As I was wondering about their appearance, Jesus used this ‘door’ and the doorstep we were sitting on as a flying object  😊 with which we could closely explore the area just mentioned. Aha! That’s why these mountains, cliffs and rocks looked so strange: although they were green-colored, it was the stone itself that was green. There were no plants whatsoever on these stony heights. No real life there, only the appearance thereof.

Back Cover of the Illuminated Bible (ESV)

On Wednesday I got no explanation from the Lord about what that all might mean. This morning then I found myself reading an article called “Prayer” by T. Austin-Sparks after my own prayer time with God. (1) In that entry he wrote about how faith and persistence in prayer, even importunity at times, could be reconciled with submitting to the will of God. TAS wrote,

“There has to be conviction through exercise before you accept the situation. You must come to the positive. Faith is a positive thing.

” Now, acceptance and passivity may be absence of faith, and action may be absolutely necessary so that importunity or persistence is not in conflict with faith; it is an aid to faith and works in the direction of faith, and becomes the ground upon which we are established in our faith. I hope this method of argument is not too abstract, that you are able to grasp it. The thing that we have said is that acceptance and passivity may be an absence of faith and action be necessary – action leading to conviction and conviction being the foundation of faith. You do not come to an established faith only through action by which you have reached conviction. That is all against a merely passive initial acceptance of a situation on some line of, “Well, the Lord is good and I leave everything with Him, taking what He sends.” That is not His will for us because, as we have pointed out, the will of God is relative so often in our case, and it is only as we take up the situation that we get to the object of the permissive will of God, the positive ground. Now in this matter God has been known often to provide a place for argument and reasoning with Himself. We have ground in the Word of God for saying that: that the Lord will go as far as either to take an attitude Himself, create, bring into being a circumstance or a set of circumstances, or call for an argument with Himself directly: “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord.””

And that is exactly what I did after reading the article, I reasoned with the Lord. I remembered how God promised to heal me in spring of 2020 right before my post-Covid symptoms changed my appearance into something I detested and I still hate looking that way. I recall that I often prayed this and that prayer for healing and others did the same. I even tried the “persistent” way, knocking on heaven’s door without ceasing. I poured my soul out and wept for months, day and night, to no avail. It felt like banging my head against a stony wall. One day God said, “This wall is not from me.”

Although I still hoped that God might heal my body in the foreseeable future, over time I had become more and more discouraged as there was no clear time line about a possible healing. Today I poured my heart out again and wept before Him without feeling liberated at all. Finally, I asked God to give me the faith OF Jesus Christ since my faith was still way too small. Out of the blue Jesus reminded me of this vision and put my feet in front of this strange door again. He opened the door Himself, entered, and turned toward me. Standing inside on the right side of the door, He stretched out His hand and welcomed me to have entered the door of (His) faith. I could hardly believe my eyes since everything around Him turned into the brightest light, there was hope and joy and everything one might ever need. Jesus smiled at me and started to explain my vision.

The green cliffs and mountains represented my faith as to the healing of my body. Those stony areas looked from afar as if there was life in them, but there was only a green color. My faith was dead, so to speak. The lovely path on the other side of faith’s door had a sandy wall on the left side, which stands for “the flesh”. Sand which is an earthly material is blown away easily by the slightest wind. The right side of this path where I could see everything, instead, represented the spiritual life I have enjoyed during the last six months. But on the left side of the path I saw NOTHING. No healing visible in my body. I experienced numerous mood changes and I was always overly sensitive regarding this issue of complete hairloss, like the sand that is quickly moved from one place to another without its own ‘will’ involved.

The next thing Jesus pointed me to was that cosy illuminated canyon far below that entry into faith. The lights had been familiar to me because they stood for this year’s Christmas which is just around the corner. So, it seems God eventually gave me the time-line I have asked for, not exactly because that would have put me under pressure by being tempted to always look at a certain point in the future. No, God is gracious and does not want to see us suffer unnecessarily.

Yes, I know, that was another looong article. 🙃 Sigh. Nonetheless, just in case I won’t publish another entry during the next week, I wish all my readers A Very Happy and Blessed Christmas time! ❤️🙏🏼🎄😇🎁🕊️❤️

Susanne ✨

(1) https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/005146.html

“In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks’ wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely – free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statment included.”

All images by Susanne Schuberth 2021

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