2012 has begun

Hi friends
I thought I'd wait a while to jot down a few thoughts about the new year but here are a few things that have crossed my heart
thinking and praying for the year ahead.
It's easy to be absorbed by the reports in the news and generally the buzz in the ether about the latest economic news, natural
disasters and the latest gossip. It's harder to keep a sound mind and see with spiritual eyes what God is doing in the nations, see the world
with a lens of hope, faith and love. - I think harder and harder.
It's also an easy route to just be a doomsday prophet and lean heavily on the end time prophecies from the Bible to justify an
end of the world scene where it all just goes to pot and all the christians 'just hang on until Jesus rescues us' sort of scenario.
Most of us (incl me!) don't want to be told that we are in fact God's answer to a world without hope.

There is no plan B. We are all God has to work with and it will be the greatest miracle in the universe when God uses us ordinary
relatively powerless followers of Jesus to bring about the radical change in the middle of a chaotic political, moral and economical
environment. You can see the small prophetic trailer for this in the Bible after Jesus had left his disciples and been taken to heaven.
They were scared, they were few in number, they were threatened and without power. - But they had a promise and they had
each other. Then they all get filledwith The Holy Spirit, the same spirit Jesus had, and it all explodes. They change from a small frightened group to a world changing movement in a matter of months and so starts a movement which continues today and is in fact accelerating very fast.
More people have become followers of Jesus in the last 100 years than in all the 1900 years before put together!!

I can see that God will once again do the thing He loves to do and that He did in the days of the fiorst disciples
, use the small, insignificant people with a childlike faith and shame all the powerful, the religious and the clever people.
I think He will raise up people who have been relatively quiet and unknown and raise them up for His big purposes in the World.

Apart from that,I feel a few key words for the church right across the world will be:

1. The world and it's systems WILL be shaken so don't focus on them. Instead, keep the eyes of your heart steadily on
God's word and with love for His church. "If your eyes are bad, the whole body will be full of darkness, if your eyes are good
the whole body will be full of light" - Be careful what you look at!
2. Keep things simple. The ways of the world will entangle you and darken your heart, harden it. I think there will be a real fight for
living a simple loving, clutter free life. We find we have to really be strong to agree in our house to speak the truth in Love,
not have any no go areas between us, to keep being a blessing financially to those around us, to love freely and show our
children that God is very much real and so incredibly good.
- I think the option is where we say we are believers but act like we don't really trust God at all practically in our lives
will bring disaster to our children and to our own lives.
3 And finally I think the Good news of Jesus will be spreading faster and faster throughout the world. It won't be obvious from
the media but all over the world it's growing and spreading. God is raising up men women and children who will be fearless,
free from religious constraints and who will be so hungry for God that all the previous revivals in the world will pale into
insignificance.

The greatest hour for the church is ahead of us. We might be afraid, small and powerless. Hold fast and be faithful. God will
be faithful to His word and raise us up in due course. The world will not know what's hit it!

Blessings and more blessings as we continue into 2012.
Andy

Andy Strajnic, 25/01/2012