Freedom Course Testimony by Louise

“When we show ‘shame’ the door and speak up about what life can actually be like, we leave that door open for others to bravely consider seeking support for themselves.”

I’ve spent years supporting other people with their mental health, and had always felt a great pride in them for reaching out and asking for support; however it felt quite different when I found myself in that place.

I had plodded through life pretty well, absorbing the ‘normal’ knocks that you get over time as life runs its course, however one particular event shook me and knocked me for six. Although I could definitely keep going in life, I knew I wasn’t living life to its fullest, and my relationship with God felt really shaky… and I wanted something more! Shame held me back from asking for support… I had managed to suppress many other life events that were painful and distressing, so I knew I could do the same with this one… but it simply felt too heavy.

Asking for help, admitting to myself and someone else that I was hurting felt really difficult… I felt a failure, like I should have been able to put into practice the things I knew would help. But in that place of shame and pain, God felt so distant and although I knew He was still there, and I could still hear Him… it wasn’t enough.

I had no particularly ‘unhealthy’ coping mechanisms per se, but the ones that I had, had isolated and limited me. I don’t believe that was what God had planned for my life. I wrestled with God… ‘Was He actually kind and filled with grace and mercy?’… because some of those events in my life that had caused pain, also caused confusion and made me question many of the things I had truly believed. That was a really painful place to be in. It didn’t feel acceptable by the Christian world standards that I thought I knew…and it felt really scary to be teetering on top of everything I had built my life upon…because if I learnt that He wasn’t who I thought He was - I wasn’t sure how I would carry on. 

Doing the Freedom course has allowed me to be vulnerably raw in sharing my life experiences, my pain, my confusion, my heartaches, my doubts and my thoughts in a safe and honouring space.

It has allowed me to have someone walk alongside me as I bravely ask those things of God, as I explore the things holding me back, the things I have believed, things I hadn’t particularly realised had a hold on me, and my super big life questions. Having someone to walk alongside me and invite and usher me into a closer place with God was just what I needed. They have never tried to give me an answer. But they have allowed me a place of safety to go to the one that does hold the answers.

They have sat with me in my tears, and rejoiced with me in the victories .. and that is priceless. They have walked me through tools that have allowed me to see things that only He saw, and to receive the answers and comfort from Him. Receiving those things from a human would never have fully been enough .. it’s completely on another level receiving it from God.  

Being a Christian of many years, and working in ministry … AND feeling that things in my life weren’t quite right, struggling in my head with overwhelming feelings and thoughts was a really challenging one for me… but I strongly believe that when we show ‘shame’ the door and speak up about what life can actually be like, we leave that door open for others to bravely consider seeking support for themselves. I honestly believe that God welcomes our questions and doubts …there’s no feeling of judgement with Him, it’s simply an invitation to draw closer.

By Louise 

Navigating Grief and Loss

Losing someone dear to you is an experience that can shake the very core of your being. It's a journey through a tangled web of emotions, a process that takes time and understanding. As I've come to realize, there are ways to support yourself amidst the storm of grief and begin to find your way back to a place of peace and acceptance.

Embracing the Complexity of Grief

Grief isn't a one-size-fits-all emotion; it's a complex tapestry of feelings that differ for each of us. It's perfectly normal to experience a whirlwind of emotions after a loss, ranging from deep sadness and shock to frustration, confusion, and even loneliness. I've often found myself feeling exhausted from being constantly busy, tearful, emotionally numb or sometimes many feelings all at once. Anger, too, can make an appearance – whether directed at the person we've lost or just general frustration with the unfairness or new reality of it all.

For many of us, grief may come accompanied by guilt, like a shadow that follows closely, questioning every interaction, every word left unsaid. And then there's the overwhelming need to avoid anything that reminds us of our loss as if the pain can be escaped through distance or distraction.

My Supportive Strategies

Throughout my own journey of grieving, I've discovered various strategies that have helped me find moments of solace and self-discovery:

Understanding the Unpredictable Path: Grief isn't linear; it unfolds in stages. There's much debate on whether these stages are the same for everyone - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - But that’s less important than remembering that how I feel now won’t last forever. Recognising that this journey comes in stages gives us at least some roadmap to understanding the emotional rollercoaster, even though my journey through them might differ from others'.

Capturing My Thoughts: Journaling has often been a refuge for me. My phone's notepad or a simple notebook can transform into a canvas where I pour my thoughts, feelings, and reflections. But don't be limited only to prose; experiment with different formats like doodling, writing lists, songs, or art. Journaling encourages honest reflection and prevents the stagnation of emotions.

Seeking Connection: Talking with friends, leaning on someone you trust, or sharing with a counsellor has given me a lifeline. These people provide a safe space in your world where you can unravel emotions, share memories, and untangle the web of thoughts that can sometimes consume us or sometimes feel just outside of our grasp.

Honouring Memories: Creating rituals to remember my loved one has become a source of comfort. Whether it's visiting a place or engaging in an activity that's deeply meaningful, these rituals offer moments of reflection and closure. For me, a favourite song whilst sitting on the bench that was his, is my ritual. 

A Box of Memories: For others of us, crafting a memory box is a tangible way to hold onto cherished moments. Filled with photos, letters, and tokens of time together is a reminder that the bond remains, even in their absence.

Unsent Letters as Healing: Writing letters to those we’ve lost can be incredibly cathartic. Pouring out my thoughts, sharing my regrets, and even finding forgiveness can provide a channel for release and closure. I’ve written many unsent letters in my time. I keep mine in their own envelopes but others might float them down a stream, burn them or rip them up. Whatever brings you closure. 

Navigating Decisions Mindfully: Grief can cloud decision-making, so seeking advice from trusted sources when making significant choices has been crucial. Grief can affect your decision-making abilities due to heightened stress hormone levels. So, seeking advice when making significant life choices is prudent.

Choosing Healthy Coping: Escaping into addictive behaviours might offer temporary relief, but they ultimately hinder the healing process. I've learned to avoid the allure of excessive screen time, a little too much wine or over-working and I’ve had to choose healthier outlets that include things that make me laugh, help me relax or allow me to learn and grow. 

Walking Toward Healing and Growth

My journey through grief has brought with it unexpected discoveries and an evolving sense of self. As I continue on this path, I'm beginning to see the following outcomes:

Shifting Through Grief Stages: The intensity of emotions may ebb and flow, but the path ahead is becoming clearer.

Discovering My Needs: I'm learning to listen to my emotional needs and recognise the triggers that amplify my grief. It's a journey of self-awareness that's both challenging and empowering.

Facing Complex Emotions: By acknowledging and confronting my thoughts and feelings head-on, I'm gradually finding a way to make peace with the past and carve a space for healing.

Looking ahead, I anticipate even more profound transformations:

Restored Mental Clarity: As the fog of grief begins to lift, I'm beginning to experience a newfound mental clarity. Decisions are becoming easier to make, and my thoughts are regaining their focus.

Embracing a New Reality: The process of healing is helping me come to terms with the new reality – one where my loved one is physically absent but always present in my heart.

Returning to Life's Rhythms: Each day brings me closer to resuming daily activities and routines. While the ache of loss remains, I'm learning to weave it into the fabric of my life.

In the end, grieving is a deeply personal journey that takes time, understanding, and support but it's a journey many of us are on. It’s good to remember that although this can feel like a lonely road we’re not actually alone on it and I have found that grief itself, weaves an intricate tapestry of shared emotions and moments of healing with all those I meet who are travelling this road too. 

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If you’ve been affected by issues raised in this post, please see below some signposting information that you may wish to explore:

Cruse Bereavement Support We help people through one of the most painful times in life – with bereavement support, information and campaigning. Helpline: 0808 808 1677

The National Bereavement Partnership provides a support helpline, counselling referral and befriending service for all those suffering from bereavement, grief, living loss, mental health issues, and those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Phone: 0800 448 0800

AtaLoss The UK's signposting service for finding local and national bereavement support services and information tailored to suit bereaved people. Email: office@ataloss.org

Steps to Intimacy

Imagine a scenario where your friend tells you they have suddenly married and moved in with someone they just met. Would you be concerned?

What about if your friend had been told that they should take their new partner at their word, trusting them implicitly without questioning? Would you be concerned?

What about if your friend’s new marriage seems to stay at a superficial level – without intimacy, without relationship, without fruit? Would you be concerned?

I know I would be.

Yet it seems that what would raise concern in any other relationship, we accept as the way of things in our Christianity. Why? Because the relationship is with God? 

This is not to say that God is untrustworthy or unfaithful in any way, but as in any relationship, trust and intimacy are built.  

When we ask the questions, ‘Can I trust God?’, there are two interpretations:

The first asks whether God is trustworthy as a life partner and of course, He is – this is an absolute Truth.

The second interpretation asks whether or not I can trust God. As in, do I have what it takes to believe this absolute Truth?

So why do we place different expectations on ourselves in our relationship with God than we would in any other relationship? Why do we expect intimacy to come from religious devotion rather than understanding that whether the relationship is with a new friend, a lover or even God, we are still the other party in the relationship and we still bring to it all our relational baggage, trust issues, defence mechanisms and fears of intimacy?

And here is the crux of the matter: How can we be intimate with someone we don’t yet love? How can we fall in love with someone we don’t fully trust? How can we come to trust someone we don’t yet know? Why would we get to know someone we have little attraction to? 

By breaking down the steps to intimacy in our relationship with God, we can begin to identify stages of our relationship with Father God, Jesus and Holy Spirit where we feel stuck or unstable and re-address these towards a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Him. 

Attraction - Getting to know - Trust - Love - Intimacy

These steps to intimacy are what God has called us into – what He has attracted us into. To attract actually means ‘to cause to participate in a venture by offering something of interest’. It leads us to ask, “what led me to choose God or to be interested in who He is?”

When you consider your own salvation moment, what attracted you to God? Was it Christianity or the kindness of someone you knew to be Christian? Was it your own desperate need for a miracle? Was it the overwhelming sense of His peace? Was it all these things converging in one moment? 

The parable of the sower best describes just how vulnerable the seed of attraction is. Like the seed scattered on the hard path or on the shallow soil, there can be times our ‘yes’, even in the most radical encounters or salvation moments, just doesn’t seem to take root and it's not for a lack of trying. We may travel from conference to conference, or attend church week in, week out. We try to create time in our week for worship or reading His Bible, we serve at church, at youth group, at the prayer group, at life group but before long God and Christianity seem to have become synonymous. All the while, we can’t seem to shake off the feeling that there’s meant to be more than religious devotion and we long to return to the excitement we felt when we first met Him, when He allured us, compelled us, to throw caution to the wind and follow Him into intimacy. 

It’s a bit like being a superfan, we can know everything there is to know about any given celebrity, we might even catch glimpses of them from the crowd and feel the love at the concert, but we have not yet sat with them face to face and experienced a heart-to-heart. 

The uncomfortable truth is that we each hold in our hands an ‘Access All Areas’ pass to meet with God and experience this heart-to-heart. It just seems we don’t know the way to His dressing room.                                            

God longs for us to get to know Him. Not just His Word or His ways, but His heart. You can hear it in scriptures where He invites us deeper into relationship with Him:

“My beloved spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me.” (Song of Solomon 2:10, NIV)

Building a relationship with God follows the same relational developments as any other relationship. Anyone who has fallen in love before will testify to the fact that a friendship occurred first. Often this friendship developed through quality time being spent together, hours of talking together, asking questions and a back and forth conversation. There is a quote that says,

“The purpose of prayer is not that God would hear us, but that we would hear Him”

Prayer was never intended to be a one-way street, but an invitation to a conversation. In Psalm 46:10, God tells us,

“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46:10, NIV)

The word ‘know’ in this scripture, comes from the Hebrew word ‘Yada’, which means, ‘to come to know as a familiar friend.’

In this one scripture, both the tension and the treasure of getting to know God is revealed. The tension for many of us is in being still and setting the time aside, a discipline that becomes easier as the treasure is discovered – a friendship with God.

Friendship Questions are a great way of beginning this treasure hunt (a few examples can be found at the bottom of this post*). Friendship Questions are purposefully designed to build friendship with the Godhead and can be used each time we set time aside to be with Him, especially as we intentionally deepen our friendship with each one – God the Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit. 

It is this practice, and other quality-time disciplines such as worship and Bible reading, that move us from being a superfan to a friend. 

In Hebrew, the word ‘Logos’ means ‘to be acquainted with facts or principles’, the simple black and white words on a page. The superfan knows Logos. 

In Hebrew, ‘Rhema’ means ‘God’s revealing of Himself in an instant of communication’. A friend knows Rhema – words brought to life. Words that bring life. 

The simple truth is that without this stage of our relationship with God, our ability to trust Him may become limited and we’re left with very little relational equity to pull from when the going gets tough. 

When our relationship with God is marked by Rhema word encounters – moments of communication as a friend – we begin to see the truth of Proverbs 30:5 come to reality,

“Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to all who come to Him for protection.” (Proverbs 30:5 NIV)

His promises, spoken to us in the quality time set aside with Him, become deeply personal to us and become the place of protection we can trust in when the storms in life begin to rage.

To trust means to have ‘a reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety of something/someone.’ 

It’s the perfect description of the trust fall exercise – that sometimes awkward exercise where one person falls blindly into the arms of another, relying on the integrity, strength and ability of that person to catch them. That exercise is always far easier when it's with someone you know, waiting behind you in a ready position. 

But even then, the exercise can still feel uncomfortable. 

The discomfort itself isn’t always a reflection on the other person. More often than not, it's a reflection on me, as the other party in the relationship. It’s a reflection of the internal vows and beliefs about the risk of looking stupid, of being judged, or being dropped, of feeling betrayed. 

The sad reality in this case, is that even if I am entirely safe with the person ready to catch me, I’m sprung back, as if tied to an elastic cord, back to those times I trusted someone or something and was let down, betrayed, made to look foolish, misrepresented, alone. I hold something back to protect myself, as a ‘prudent mistrust’, just in case. 

This is when the ability to trust is less about them and more about me, or less about God and more about me. Which brings us back to the question: 

“Can I trust God?”

This means that to be able to love freely without the tension of those elastic cords springing me back, I need to find a way of cutting myself free. 

This is also where the treasures of conversations with God really come into play as we move from asking Friendship Questions, to questions around the conditions of our own heart and how we might become free to love and be loved. 

You might want to ask God:

“Father God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, will you show me any beliefs, vows or judgements spoken over me that hold me back in life and love?”

Choosing to forgive those who caused us to become entangled in these cords is how we cut ourselves free from them. 

“Father God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, I choose to forgive (name) for (what they did/said). I release myself from living my life based on this. Father God / Jesus / Holy Spirit, as I give you this belief, vow or judgement, what do you desire to give me in exchange/what Truth do you want to teach me?”

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God is trustworthy and God is loving – these are absolute Truths. When we trust God because we know Him, we come to love Him more deeply. There is an interesting passage in John 14:15 in which Jesus says,

“If you love me, you will obey what I command,” (John 14:15, NIV)

Reading this passage from a place of even prudent mistrust can feel almost like being in a bad relationship where ‘love’ is controlled and conditional. 

“If you actually did love me, you would prove it to me,”

This is not His heart, and He would tell you Himself. 

Anyone in love finds joy in making the other smile. In our love for Him, as in the days of our first love, we felt delight in making Him smile – we felt joy in going round doing good, the way Jesus would. Putting it slightly differently, John 14:15 may as well as say,

“When you fall in love with me, you can’t help but do the things that make me smile,”

But love itself is a feeling which can be difficult to sustain. Ask any married couple, there comes a time when the feeling of love just isn’t enough to sustain the relationship long-term. It’s the same experience we can sometimes feel after attending a conference or event in which we deeply encounter the Spirit of God. It’s not unusual after a few days to feel the conference ‘hangover’ where the high of the encounter has passed and we return to our day to day life. 

So, was the encounter pointless? No, of course not. Each encounter is an invitation to draw closer into intimacy with Him. Each encounter is an invitation to live from a place of seeing ourselves the way He sees us – to love ourselves the way He loves us. Love on its own, without intimacy, can be fickle or fragile, it's a feeling that can ebb and flow in life. Love and Intimacy are as different as State and Status. 

Love is a ‘state of being’, a state that can change. ‘State’ is described as ‘a specific condition at a specific time’ and my condition of feeling loved can change. The tension here is that we often only receive the love that we feel we are worthy to receive. The goal therefore, is to not rely on the feeling of being loved by God or the feeling of love for Him to measure how well we’re doing in our Christian walk, but to allow those encounters with the Lord to lead us to a place of intimacy with Him. Not just a Christian walk but a lifestyle of walking with Him unafraid and uninhibited, regardless of how we feel.

To live from this place of unconditional love means loving ourselves the way He does and for many of us, the Steps to Intimacy is a journey we will need to take ourselves on. 

This place of vulnerability with the Lord is a place where we look pain and fear in the eyes in the safety of the Presence of God and allow Him to heal it. It’s where we invite Him into the secret places of our heart – a place where we have hidden the hurts. As we do this, we begin to live from a place of our Status. 

Status is a classification, a statement of the facts. And these are the facts: through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of our sins, our status is classified by God, according to His Word, as ‘Loved’. 

So, it's time to find our way to His dressing room for that heart-to-heart. He so longs to meet us there.

“Let the King take me into His chambers,” (Song of Solomon 1:4, NIV)

*Example Friendship Questions:

• (Father / Jesus / Holy Spirit), is there a meeting place you’d like to show me where we can spend time together, today?

• (Father / Jesus / Holy Spirit), if You were to liken me to a tool in a toolbox, which one am I most like? In what way?

• (Father / Jesus / Holy Spirit), if you were to liken me to an animal, what would I be? Why?

• (Father / Jesus / Holy Spirit), what colour would best represent me / You today? Why?

The Power of Feeling - By Louise Chenery

“It’s a beautiful thing to be able to really feel”

….said no one, ever.

I’m pretty certain that those of us uncomfortable with emotion and expression wouldn’t agree. Those of us ‘feelers’ who spend the time trying not to take on the emotion around us, let alone feel it for ourselves, would also disagree. Then there are those of us so accustomed to pain who want nothing more than to not feel.

And yet…

…God has created us as humans, with the incredible gift of feelings. Our feelings are our internal barometer. They are the indicators within our car that tell us when our petrol is low, when our seatbelt needs attending to, or when we’ve left our lights on. Our feelings are an internal navigation system, helping us to respond to external and internal events. They help us know how to take care of ourselves in different situations.

The reasons we don’t allow ourselves to feel are many and varied, and valid.

Often as children, we are taught, even in healthy environments, that our feelings aren’t valid or aren’t to be trusted. It happens when a child has a tantrum and is told to ‘stop it’, or receives an angry response. It happens on the first day of school when a crying child may be told ‘oh, you’re fine, don’t be silly’. We then reinforce that message internally to ourselves into adulthood.

Or if feelings have been extremely painful for us, we numb them in order to not experience them again. Feelings linked to traumatic experiences can come over us like waves, again and again, triggered by seemingly random moments. It may be that expressing any kind of feeling, need, or want landed serious consequences for you in your early years.

Sadly, the Christian world hasn’t always been great at allowing feelings. We may have been taught that our feelings are liars, rather than acknowledging that the belief system behind the feelings might need some attention. We may have been taught that somehow feelings and faith are at odds with each other, and of course, feelings are the ones to be ditched in that scenario. We love a good dose of the Sunday morning joyful feels as we worship, but feel shame at the ‘negative’ emotions we’re not sure we can bring along.

But if we find it hard to accept our own emotional state, I can guarantee we’ll find it even harder to show those feelings in front of other people, let alone the King of the Universe. This is why I find God’s invitation to feel so beautiful when I read David’s words in Psalm 42:5:

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

The irony is, that I used to hate this Psalm. As a deep feeler, I used to read it as ‘Why on earth are you downcast, O my Soul? What have you got to be sad about? (Inner voice: But I am sad!) Why so disturbed when you shouldn’t be? (Inner voice: rejoice in the Lord always! Right?) Pull your socks up and put your hope in God.

But I re-read the Psalm after God revealed how much he values my emotions and it was a game changer. Here’s why:

What if David isn’t giving himself a stern talking-to? What if he is gently acknowledging his pain?

In the Hebrew, David firstly addresses his Soul. He is asking it a question: What is this I’m feeling? He is curious. Because David allows himself to acknowledge how he feels, then asks himself why he feels that way. His distress and discomfort are clear. He recognises his emotion and he notices where he feels it.

He talks to his Soul, encouraging it to seek comfort and hope in God. Not in spite of his feelings, not once he has managed to squash his feelings away so he’s more presentable, but in full view of his God. To David, the logical conclusion is noticing his emotion, exploring it, and leading it to seek refuge in God. Reminding it that it won’t drown him, but will result in being able to praise Him.

Our Creator invites us to feel, to notice what we feel, to see how it informs us of our next steps, and He wants to be the one to bring hope at the end of that process.

What if we took the step to allow ourselves to notice what we feel, to explore and bring our feelings into the light, free from shame and free from judgement? What could that look like for you today?

Recognising The Voice Of God

“There is no longer a chasm between us from which he calls out, but a secret place, within our own spirit which we often interact with from the place of our soul – our mind, our thinking, our processing. ”

— Debbie Harvie

The start of a new year inevitably brings thoughts or conversations of new possibilities for the year ahead. For some of us, it’s no more than a passing thought of a commitment to become healthier or to sort out our finances. For others, whole activities are dedicated to these possibilities, through magazine collaging, letters to our future self, or other creative ways of recording the heart’s desires for the year ahead.

Whatever the approach we take to making plans for 2023, the Bible is clear:

‘A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.’ (Proverbs 16:9)

So, does this mean that there’s really no point in planning? I wouldn’t say so. Instead, I would suggest that there’s an invitation for partnership with the Lord and to align our plans with His perfect will but, as Amos 3:3 would tell us, ‘How can two walk together unless they first agree?’.

Taking steps towards seeing plans fulfilled then, really means learning to stay in step with God and entering into agreement with His heart’s desires for our year ahead. But, how can we be sure that God speaks into such things? The real question is, why would we struggle to believe that He does? The question itself, I feel, is underpinned by our own sense of disappointment or fear that not only is God silent in matters of the heart, but He is also absent.

In the noise of a pluralistic culture, it’s not surprising that many of us cry out for God to make His will obvious or at least, predictable and ideally, to just ‘show up’ in a way that would cause us to never question His voice or His presence, again…

Surely, if God just showed Himself, we would believe?

But, we’ve been here before, needing pomp and ceremony and supernatural encounter in order to believe, and it serves us well to step back and remind ourselves that God already did all this. In our history as humankind, God revealed Himself supernaturally, as a Present and Almighty God.

“By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.” (Exodus 13:21)

This pillar of cloud and pillar of fire was the manifest presence of Almighty God. It shouldn’t escape us that God presented Himself in such a way that it not only made His existence undeniable, but also met the need and desire of the people to be warm, sheltered, and reassured of safety. His presence, in the form of this pillar, directed the steps of the Israelites through the wilderness.

Shocking as it sounds, this supernatural and awesome sight became little more than the landscape. Right in the midst of such a fearfully wonderful sight, the Israelites became afraid and over-familiar, scorning even the words of His prophet, Moses.

Presented as a supernatural being, we struggled to relate to God; we approached Him as the unknown, feared Him as the unknown, and rejected Him as the unknown. As His people would not draw near to Him as Almighty God, then He would become man, and walk amongst us.

Hebrews 1:1 gives us an account of this: “Going through a long line of prophets, God has been addressing our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Recently he spoke to us directly through his Son.”

In John 14, God makes His Presence known in Jesus, as God incarnate. Listen to Jesus’ words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

You can almost hear God, shouting to us as if from across a chasm…

‘It’s me! I’m here! Do you not recognise me?’

Yet despite being face to face with God as man, we hear a familiar question asked by Philip, one of His disciples, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Surely, if God just showed Himself, we would believe?

Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me. Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do”. (John 14: 8-9)

Even presented as human, we struggled to relate to God. Presented as human, we approached Him as human, judged Him as human, and crucified Him, as human. In the days following his resurrection, Jesus again helped reframe our understanding, helping us to grasp that He is not just Son of Man, born of a woman (Galatians 4:4), but Son of God, born of the Spirit (Luke 1:26-38).

By this same Spirit, we have open access, an ‘Access All Areas pass’ if you like, to areas of intimacy and authenticity with Almighty God like humankind has never known before. He continues to speak, just as Jesus said He would:

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (John 16:12, NIV)

Here, God reveals himself through the person of the Holy Spirit; the Wonderful Counsellor; the still, small, but ever-present and ever-accessible, voice of God.

Maybe some of our misconceptions about the voice of God are connected to our tendency towards religious jargon for our journey of faith. So often, we talk about ‘hearing’ the voice of God. But, does ‘hearing’, actually mean ‘hearing?’.

Think about it, when you recall a number such as a phone number or pin number, how do you do it? Do you ‘hear’ the number in your head or the corresponding sound of the beeps? Do you see the numbers, like a picture? Do you recall how you wrote them down and recall the memory of it? Do you remember the pattern your fingers make as you enter them?

I ask this because we all receive and recall information differently, through different styles of processing. We learn and understand according to these different styles. To reduce the voice of God to hearing only is the equivalent of only ever communicating by talking – no written word, no poetry, no art, no music, no dance or movement.

God does have an audible voice (1 Samuel 3, Matthew 3:17), but more often than not, the voice of God can be quiet and it can be a challenge to quieten all other voices, in order to hear His. This sense of God speaking to us may be what the world calls our ‘voice of conscience’, a familiar sound within our own souls.

For some of us, His voice may be visual - we receive the voice of God through seeing or visualising His voice through pictures or visions, or like watching a scene play out in our mind. What the world calls our ‘mind’s eye’, may well be the gift of visualising God’s voice by partnering our imagination with His heart.

And then, there’s what the world calls ‘intuition’, or a ‘sixth sense’ - that sense that something just feels right or feels wrong, a deep sense of this way or that way as the right way. This is also God speaking to us, through movement or sensation or a sense of conviction. In Christian circles, we might call this ‘discernment’.

But why does the sound of His voice too often sound like our own thoughts? Is it just an overactive imagination? Why can’t we tell whether our intuition is influenced by fear or faith?

As Romans 8:16 tells us, we have a spirit, and “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit.” But, we also have a soul and a body. Just as He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each sharing in the nature of God, we are made in His image (Genesis 1:27), we are also tripartite – as spirit, soul and body – separate parts of me, but still ‘me’, and all intrinsically sharing my nature.

John 8:47 promises that when we belong to God, we can recognise Him. When we say yes to Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, our spirit becomes awakened to His spirit. It’s as if our own spirit offers us a secret place of meeting, where we can learn to recognise His presence and His voice. That is, we receive the ‘Access All Areas pass’ to our own private audience with the King.

There is no longer a chasm between us from which he calls out, but a secret place, within our own spirit which we often interact with from the place of our soul – our mind, our thinking, our processing. From this secret place within our spirit, we hear His voice within our soul, echoed as thoughts, pictures, or sensations, all as familiar as the sound of our own voice.

Simply put, let’s take the pressure off trying to figure out how to fulfil our heart’s desires for 2023. Instead, let’s trust God’s ability to direct us and our God-given ability to recognise when He does.

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, you will recognise a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)

Debbie Harvie

'Mercy UK: The Story So Far' by Arianna Walker

Chapter 2- 'God’s Yes and My Amen'

The first three years of leading Mercy UK were some of the most challenging years of my life. We are a faith-based ministry, with a business plan that makes no earthly sense:

1. We provide our services completely free of charge

2. We tithe 10% of our unrestricted income

3. We do not accept any government funding, grants or gifts with strings attached. Any funding stream that would ask us to dilute the message of the Gospel is refused

Only God’s grace and provision can make this business model work! Not charging for your services, giving money away and being particular about where your funding comes from is not a business model many would be willing to build with, and yet here we were trying to make the impossible possible.

This sounds noble and inspiring and indeed it is, but the reality of living it in those early days was far from noble or inspiring. It was sleepless nights, heart palpitations and panic attacks. It was striving, working in my own strength and trying to live with the heavy weight of responsibility, anxiety and fear of failure on my shoulders. Truth be told, I had no idea what faith was, even though I had been a Christian all my life. Yes, I had heard about faith, and read about it in the bible, but in reality, I did not understand the mechanics of faith, how to grow it, and what it looked like in my own personal walk with God.

And so God took me on a process of learning, growing, changing- and it was painful and beautiful all at the same time.

I learnt that faith and trust are pretty much the same thing. Learning to grow my faith really was an exercise in learning to trust. To take my eyes off of my own (in)ability, to stop thinking I have anything to offer the Lord, other than listening ears and a willing and obedient heart. I learnt to tune my ear to what He was saying yes to, so I could add my amen (so be it), rather than trying to get God to say amen (so be it) to what I was wanting a yes to. There’s a difference...let me explain.

At that time we were in serious financial trouble as a ministry. I had not been paid for six months, neither had another staff member, and the rest of the staff were only being paid what they absolutely needed in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It was so far removed from the vision and the dream of what Mercy could and should be operating like. We couldn’t afford to pay tax and were on a tax repayment scheme. We were late on payments left right and centre, and I genuinely thought we were not going to make it. We were going to fail. I needed God to respond to my immediate angst, the immediate need, the now crisis. I kept presenting this situation and desperately wanted God’s amen (so be it) to the yes I was presenting. But He was saying yes to something else, something He needed my amen for (so be it) and that’s where we were not seeing eye to eye.

Because every time I prayed about today’s crisis, for encouragement, a word or some sort of answer to our very present and immediate need, He gave me this scripture from Isaiah 54 (NLT) that was talking about tomorrow, about the future, about expansion and growth.

“2 Enlarge your house; build an addition.

Spread out your home, and spare no expense!

3 For you will soon be bursting at the seams.”

How can I believe for tomorrow, for growth and expansion when we can’t even pay today’s bills?? And every time His answer was

“Believe in your heart and speak with your mouth, that which I have already promised”.

He was challenging me to say amen (so be it) to what He was saying yes to, rather than me trying to get Him to say amen (so be it) to what my agenda was. And I was angry because He was not meeting my immediate need, but just kept talking about the future, about expansion, about growth. Until one day it occurred to me that if God was speaking to me about tomorrow, then that must mean there would be one. There was a future, Mercy would survive, and the ministry was not going to fail. If only I was able to trust God and grow my faith, so I could begin to believe what He was promising me.

And so I began to unwrap the layers of doubt and unbelief that surrounded my heart and mind and chose to surrender to God in a new and deeper way. To say amen to His yes. It took time, it hurt, it was a very deliberate act of obedience, that made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I realised later that God had me on the very same journey every resident of the Mercy home goes on. My own Mercy journey, my own battle, my own stepping into new layers of freedom. I began to choose to believe that He is who He says He is, to believe that I am loved by Him and that He is not setting me up to fail. I gradually chose to let go of needing to have all the answers and to have it all worked out and hold on for dear life to the truth of His character- He is good, He is able and He is willing.

It took time, but I finally came to a place of being able to do that. My faith-filled amen rose from dee within my heart to embrace the promise God was saying yes to.

“2 Enlarge your house; build an addition.

Spread out your home, and spare no expense!

3 For you will soon be bursting at the seams.”

And then the phone rang. It was the Christian Trust Fund who had helped us purchase the Mercy home three years before. The home we were barely able to keep open. The home that the Lord kept telling me needed to be enlarged.

“Are you thinking of building an extension to the home?” came the very unexpected question.

“No, I said, but I think the Lord is. It’s all He’s talking about.”

There was a moment’s silence and then I heard these words: “Well, when you are ready, let us know because we’d like to pay for it!”

Two years later we opened the extension to the Mercy home, entirely debt free, doubling the bed capacity, enabling us to help more people. Gradually, through a catalogue of both small and significant miracles, our monthly income increased and we were able to pay our staff what we owed them, pay the tax office off, as well as every single outstanding bill.

I’d love to tell you that we never had financial difficulties again, that our bank account is always in overflow and we have no cashflow concerns, but that wouldn’t be true. What is true though, is that when the financial challenges do come, they don’t hold power over me anymore. I don’t have sleepless nights, I don’t carry the weight and fear of failure or responsibility or anxiety. I know who leads this charity, I know whose responsibility it is to provide for it. And I know that He is able, He is willing, that He has done it before and will continue to do so. And if He does not? Well, then we cease to operate and that won’t be on me, that’s on Him too.

His grace is sufficient- a truth that I know in the very core of my being. Without His grace, I would drown in the impossibility of it all. Instead, I am fully aware of our lack, our infinite weakness and inability, and I offer it to Him in surrender. And I lead from that position.

His Grace has always covered us and whilst ever He leads this ministry, it’s His grace that will continue to provide and our faith and trust will continue to receive it. Looking back, I am so thankful for the faith lessons learnt along the way; for the robust, immovable faith at the very centre of my being- built there not by my own works but by His.

Keep Choosing Life!

“It really is so liberating when lies that seemed so true are exchanged for HIS truth!”

- FORMER RESIDENT

Before Mercy I’d settled that ‘this is just what life is going to be like’…

Half of my life had been dictated by an eating disorder, an addictive cycle I found myself in to cope with life. But by saying 'yes' (okay, more like an 'ok fine!') to apply to Mercy and to what God wanted to do, I now find myself in a much better position to face each day, to fight each day for the life that I want to live - a life with more freedom. 

The Mercy residential home was my last hope, I felt I’d tried everything else, but I hadn’t reaaaaally tried God and honestly - I was reluctant to. I kept hitting rock bottom and climbing out on my own using unhealthy coping mechanisms only to find myself back at the bottom.

I entered the Mercy home; walls up and believing a whole load of lies, but to me they were undeniable truths that I felt defined me and my life.

I had almost totally lost who God had created me to be and instead created someone that I deemed to be more acceptable than the real me, someone that kept themselves small, tried to blend in with those around and keep others out. There seemed to be a theme throughout my Mercy journey, one of 'coming out of hiding' and 'being made new, washing away the old' and after many months of fighting, God presented me with a decision between life and death. With the support from the team at Mercy, I chose life and sealed that decision with being baptised in the river near the Mercy home.

While I was at Mercy I remember hearing someone say that

'Every resident is here at a different point in their healing journey. For some, they've already started prior to Mercy and this is their next step, for others this is the very first step'.

I've held onto that throughout and after graduating from Mercy to remind myself that regardless of where others are on their journeys and where I am on mine, I truly believe that Mercy was just the start for me, that there are so many more layers of healing to come and that's ok, I'm trying to have grace for myself through that process and bash pride and condemnation on the head!

I am my own harshest judge and critic, but learning that 'not all thoughts are true' and 'its ok to make mistakes' have been real revelations for me - and truthfully, ones I continue to grapple with! These weren’t just said to me one day and I thought ‘oh right yeah that thought isn’t true and it’s fine to make mistakes’, no… I had to do something first.

I had to allow myself to be honest about my mistakes with Mercy staff members. It was their subsequent reactions and responses of compassion and understanding that, slowly but surely, began to rewrite that thought.

I had to allow my thoughts to be challenged, not just by those around me but by the truths that God spoke to me, doing this and not getting defensive takes continuous practice but it really is so liberating when lies that seemed so true are exchanged for HIS truth! 

To everyone who supports Mercy I want you to know how truly grateful I am, during my journey we were hit by a pandemic (you know the one!) but Mercy was able to operate virtually and continue to support us and I cannot tell you how much that meant and how incredibly significant that was for me.

So I sit typing this, from a more equipped battle position, continuing to navigate life's hills and valleys; I still don’t get it right, but I know now that I don't have to do it on my own.

Resident Graduation Speech

“He has remained constant, and He has shown me how He sees me. He has broken off and removed so many lies, replacing them with His honest, loving truth.”

- Former Resident

It has been a long, bumpy and crazy old journey with Jesus over the past couple of years. I have stepped out in faith and followed Jesus to where I believed He was calling me. First, this was to take part in a Christian gap-year course, called Soul Edge. There were so many signs from God that I should go, so I did. Before going, I thought I had sorted my mental health, but whilst I was there God was like uh-uh. That was when Mercy was suggested. Initially, I was like you have got to be joking, and I took offence to what felt like an insult. But, Oh my! I couldn’t be more glad that this place was suggested to me.

In the past, before Mercy, I experienced many disappointments and hurts; my hope had dwindled and I lost the sense of who I was. I had reached a place where I was hanging onto the idea of hope, let alone purpose and hope for any kind of a future. For too long I had been living out of a place of disappointment, despair/discouragement, hurt that turned to self-hate, fear, unforgiveness and a belief system that said, “I am a victim, a target and a failure.” This led to me avoiding parts of life and isolating to try protect myself and avoid any more hurt.

One of the first ways God spoke to me here was by lifting some words of a page in a card, it read

“God’s word is truth, and truth is more powerful than facts”.

I felt God clarify that what I call facts, are beliefs built on the evidence of my feelings and experiences. These words have become like a weapon from God, that I can use to battle with the facts and lies I have come to believe.

I won’t pretend this journey has been easy. There are times where I have doubted God and the things He has said. Despite the evidence and cases I ended up challenging Him with, He has remained constant, and He has shown me how He sees me. He has broken off and removed so many lies, replacing them with His honest, loving truth.

In laying everything that has troubled me before God, He has helped me to see what’s true and what’s not true, what’s of Him and what’s not of Him, what is good and what I need to work at with Him. His Truth has set me free from the lies I have believed for so long.

I can say yes, I was victimized and abused, but I am not a victim. I am an overcomer. I may have failed at things, but I am not a failure; I have not failed God. God has taught me to say that’s who I was yesterday, that’s not who I am today.

Now, one thing I love is a but. I have learnt that, in life, there is always a but, and God gets to have the final say…

Psalm 18 says He reached from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy, and from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster; But the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; He rescued me because He was pleased with me and delighted in me. Breaking off the lies is not the only way God has moved in my life here at Mercy.

One time in prayer, I found myself on my knees surrendering my all to Him, I realized and excepted my weaknesses and my need and desire for Him, as I did this He met me with such love and peace. Later in the morning, in a moment of being still, He said,

“I have given you the freedom, you just need to learn to walk in it”.

In the afternoon, He washed away the guilt and shame as I was baptized. After being baptized, the Holy Spirit filled me with joy. I have experienced His joy previously, but this felt different; it felt like God was filling me with His joy in a permanent and restorative way. That evening during worship, I felt the lord lift my head causing me to look up, I asked him about this, and I sensed him saying that He no longer wants me to walk through life with my head hung in shame. As Margret Stunt put it, His cross is all sufficient, not just some sufficient. 

One of the most beautiful and incredible moments I have ever experienced was when God asked me why I wasn’t yet wearing the ring I brought for myself as a graduation present. When I asked “but why would I”, He replied

“My victory is already within you. I have crowned you and anointed you as my daughter”.

I cannot express the overwhelming sense of love and acceptance to a depth I have never experienced before. I suddenly knew who I was, the surge of courage that filled me in that moment, and still fills me, I cannot describe. I know who I am, I am His creation, fearfully and wonderfully made, both strong and beautiful. He never created me weak.

The last way God has helped me that I have time to share with you today is in regard to disappointment. In the first couple of weeks at Mercy, God drew me to the library and my attention to a Joyce Meyer book; there are two quotes I’d like to share, through which God spoke to me… First,

“In the world we cannot live without disappointment, but in Jesus we can always be given re-appointment.”

The second quote read

“Hoping doesn’t cost anything, and it could pay off generously. Disappointment, however, is very expensive. It costs you your joy and your dreams of tomorrow.”

I am excited to declare, hope has been restored in my life! Through God’s help in renewing my mind, His ability to communicate with me and show me His perspectives, I have come to a place where I am filled with hope, and I truly believe He has plans and a purpose for me. I trust that he has prepared me for whatever is next. Whilst I am still uncertain of what lays on the journey ahead, I feel confident to walk forward, and I trust that while I can’t see the way, He already knows it. And for me this is walking by faith and not by sight. I trust he will open the correct doors and close the others, guiding me as He always has.

The Lord God is my strength, my source of courage, my invincible army. He makes my feet steady and sure like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk forward with spiritual confidence, on my high places of challenge and responsibility.

I feel blessed beyond measure to be standing here and able to tell you of some of great works of Jesus in my life, that I could never have imaged, or thought that could come true, let alone my living reality. I thank God for each of you and the faith He has placed within you all. I couldn’t be more grateful for the way he has enabled so many of our paths to cross; allowing for each educational, inspiring, reassuring and empowering chat, each hug and prayer, and every single annoying challenge that I have been set along the way.

Thank you one and all x

'Mercy UK: The Story So Far' by Arianna Walker

“I saw nameless, faceless girls who I wanted to help rescue. I never once thought the first broken girl I would ever come across would be my own sister, and the first home I would open would be my own.”

— Arianna Walker

The story so far…Chapter 1

 “It doesn’t matter what the problem is, Jesus is the answer”

I first heard Nancy Alcorn- the President and Founder of Mercy Multiplied speak those famous words, sat in my church congregation in Bradford, England in 1999. 

The church was captivated as we heard how Nancy spent the first eight years of her career working with young women in prisons and then investigating child abuse cases on behalf of her State’s social services.  It was during this eight-year period that Nancy realised the inadequacy of these programmes to offer real transformation in the lives of hurting young women.

I’ll never forget seeing Nancy standing there powerfully declaring that:

“Isaiah 61…to bind up the broken hearted, to see the captives set free, to comfort all who mourn…was not given to government agencies or professional bodies, but it was given to the people of God- it is a mandate for the Church of Jesus Christ!”

As our church stood to its feet in applause, tears streamed down my face and I breathed a prayer:

““Lord, if there’s any way I can be part of this, make it so…””

And right at that moment, as if someone had set me on fire on the inside, something came alive in my heart and soul, purpose was ignited and a seed planted - my journey with Mercy UK had begun.

It wasn’t long after this encounter that the impact of what I had silently prayed became clear.  My husband and I had just moved into a lovely home and were ready to start having a family, we’d been married for 6 years and I had a rosy romantic notion of how we were going to be a cozy little family, happily enjoying our new life stage.  We thanked God for the wonderful favour on our life and vowed we would hold all that He gave us before him with open hands. 

“What’s ours is Yours”, we prayed.

And then crisis hit my family. My 15 year old sister, Debbie, was on a mission to self-destruct and my parents were at their wits’ end. They could not understand how the beautiful child they had brought up with love and Christian principles was so messed up.  It had been three years of a gradual deterioration in her mental health and they had no frame of reference for what could’ve caused such a break down in her well-being. My sister’s school called to say they were about to expel her- she was rude, disrespectful, angry and when she tried to overdose on paracetamol, my parents feared for her life.

It was time for drastic measures and so my parents called my husband and me with a request. Could Debbie come and live with us for a while? Maybe being away from the bad crowd she’d gotten into and starting at a new school and joining our church would help her with a fresh start.

I’d like to say that we said yes immediately but we didn’t. I had a picture perfect dream of family life that did not include an angry, dysfunctional 15 year old. I had left home when Debbie was 9 years old and I really didn’t know who she’d become, nor did I have any concept of what we could do to help.

But God reminded us of our prayer to Him- “I thought you said that all you had was Mine?  Does that not include your home and your idea of what this next season looks like?”

“And so we said ‘yes’. And my ‘yes’ to her became a ‘yes’ to many.
”

When I first heard Nancy speak and my heart had responded with a whispered prayer, I saw nameless, faceless girls who I wanted to help rescue- I never once thought the first broken girl I would ever come across would be my own sister, and the first home I would open would be my own.

Within weeks of her living with us, Debbie told me what had happened to her and it broke my heart. She told me she’d been playing in the park, when she was only 12 and a man had befriended her.  He was 10 years her senior, drove his own car and showed an interest in her that made her feel grown up and affirmed.  Within the space of a few short weeks, he had groomed her into a sexual relationship with him.  Only then did it become apparent that he was a drug dealer and that he had plans for my sister that took her from the dream life she had been living, into a living hell.

Everyday for three years was the same- hidden with the same lie that all was fine, but it wasn’t. She got into fights, began harming herself, became addicted to drugs and even tried to end her life. She was caught in a spiral of helplessness and shame, and her anger burned against a God who should have protected her, who could have stopped it or told someone about the abuse she was suffering.  So she renounced God and vowed to live her life outside of Him.

“Every young woman at Mercy is someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s friend…”

It was when Debbie lived with us that I began to learn what lies beneath the behaviours of the broken.  I learnt what abuse can do to a person, I learnt the lies that victims believe about themselves and I learnt the helplessness of seeing a loved one battle for sanity amid the onslaught of painful memories. I witnessed first-hand the lengths a person will go to, to numb the pain inside.

I learnt about the importance of boundaries, of compassion that’s coated in tough love and I learnt to go to God for wisdom, insight, empathy, grace and all the resources I did not have myself.  During this time, I gave Debbie one of Nancy Alcorn’s books: ‘Mercy Moves Mountains’ and though I know she read it, I saw no immediate change.

Three years passed by and I watched Debbie try to fix herself, I watched her try to be good, try to go to church, try, try, try.  The day my toddler son came out of Debbie’s room clutching drugs in his hand was the day I knew she needed to move out.  I knew that what awaited her ‘out there’ was darkness and though I feared for her life, we had to trust her into God’s hands.  My parents were in agreement and together we held our breath for what was to come.

Debbie will tell you the parts of this story that I am missing out, because they are hers to tell, but suffice to say that 18 months after reading the book, she rang me.

 “I need to go to Mercy”

 she said.  The trouble was that Mercy did not yet exist in the UK- we were still praying, still believing, still fundraising.  Nancy had faithfully come to preach at our church and teach us as a volunteer team many times over the years but in terms of actual realisation of the vision for a UK Mercy home, we seemed a very long way off.

So as a family, we rang around other places in the UK for help. We looked at various programmes and residential facilities but none offered what we felt was unique about Mercy.  Mercy is not a rehab, Mercy is not a women’s refuge, Mercy is not a Christian retreat-

“Mercy is a place where a young woman is able to dig up the very root causes of her problems and, in partnership with the Holy Spirit, address each one and find healing at the deepest level.”

When we couldn’t find anything in the UK that resembled what we had learnt about Mercy’s way of helping young women find hope and healing, Debbie bravely picked up the phone, called Mercy Multiplied in America and asked for help.

The trail blazer

On Valentine’s day 2001, Debbie walked through the doors of Mercy Multiplied in Nashville, Tennessee- the first young woman from the UK to be accepted onto the Mercy programme. 

Seven months later she graduated and came back to the UK with hope and healing in her heart. Debbie’s transformation just deepened my conviction that this country desperately needed Mercy and I was determined to keep focused, to stay committed to the journey of pioneering one over here, no matter how long it took.

Months passed by, then years; there were many times I thought about giving up on the dream, or moving on to other projects or charities that seemed to have a chance of actually becoming a reality.

I remember at one point considering giving my attention to another ministry that had begun to grow and gain momentum in our local area, and I began to make plans to leave the volunteer Mercy team behind.  As I prayed about it, God gave me a picture of a chessboard and I saw myself clearly positioned on the right hand side of the board, on the side-lines. 

“Be patient”, He told me, “you’re not in play yet.  Hold your position and only move when I tell you.”

 Many of the original team had become involved in other areas of church life or had moved on into a career or family life stage, that meant they could no longer commit to coming to our monthly volunteer team meetings.  The team was dwindling, we had no Mercy home, no finances, and the vision to see Mercy established in the UK was in danger of being just wishful thinking.

Divine connections

But God had a plan and in June 2004, five years after Nancy’s first visit to Bradford, Nancy came to speak at an annual women’s conference hosted by Charlotte Gambill called ‘Cherish’.  In amongst the crowd of delegates was a woman, Alison, who was to become the catalyst for the first UK Mercy home.

As Alison heard Nancy Alcorn speak about a place where young women could come and experience God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and life transforming power, her heart leapt.  As one of the Trustees of a Christian Trust Fund, she was in a position to open a door to much needed funding.  Having always had a desire to help the broken and to see the captives set free- Alison believed that the time was right to approach Nancy with an invitation to present a business plan to the Trust fund she represented.  Nancy excitedly directed her to one of the UK Mercy team and from that point onwards things began to move very quickly.

The Chair of that particular Trust Fund has since told me that he never had any intention of giving Mercy significant funding; he suspected that we would never be able to raise enough on-going operational income to sustain the project, nor did he believe that we would be able to survive the funding cuts the UK government were making to other similar projects.

Yet God had a different plan!  Within a few weeks of the Trust Fund agreeing to purchase a property on behalf of Mercy, I was given the task of scouring the local area for the perfect house that could accommodate a growing list of essential qualities.  Rural but not too isolated, large but not monstrous, accessible but not exposed… and on it went.

I clearly remember the day I first viewed ‘Cragg Royd’ (the name of the Mercy UK home).  As I was being shown around the house by a lovely couple who had raised their children there, we walked into the dining room and there was a huge antique Edwardian dining table gleaming in the centre of the room.  As I admired it,

“I could hear the singing, the laughter, the lunchtime chatter of imaginary Mercy residents around this table and with that, I silently declared that this was what we had been looking for all along. ”

The doors open

On September 4th 2006, Mercy UK opened its doors for the first time, and as the small staff team assembled to welcome our first young woman, we all had a sense of momentous occasion. She was the first of many and though we were inexperienced, had no idea where the long-term finances would come from and felt completely out of our depth- we also felt the exhilaration of the start of an amazing adventure with God.

We put our hand in His and we let go of our own inadequacies to rely on His adequacy, we put aside our fear and embraced faith and knew that only His anointing, His presence, His healing, His wisdom, His provision would see us through whatever was to come next.

Provision for the Vision

Six months after we opened the doors, I was officially appointed as CEO of Mercy UK- I felt the weight of responsibility heavy on my shoulders but knew that this was my time and my turn- God had picked up my little chess piece and I was officially in play.

One of the biggest areas of challenge was finance; God had spoken to Nancy in 1983, at the very beginning of Mercy, about three core principles:

1. Young women would come completely free of charge

2. We would tithe 10% of our unrestricted income

3. We would not accept any government funding, grants or gifts with string attached. Any funding stream that would ask us to dilute the message of the Gospel would be refused

Only God’s grace and provision can make this business model work! Not charging for your services, giving money away and being particular about where your funding comes from is not a business model many would be willing to build with, and yet over the many decades that followed, God has proven the wisdom of the world to be foolish.

Personally, I’ve had to learn the power of faith- learn that God does not respond to need (if He did, there would be no need in the world) but He always responds to faith.  I began a journey of learning what it feels like to walk on water, to see God do the impossible, to be part of seeing miracles happen daily- not just in the lives of the young women we were helping but in our own lives as staff and in every area of our organisation.

Finances and the weight of salaries and people’s lives were a constant challenge to my faith levels and though I failed many times in believing that God was not just able, but that He was also willing, He kept teaching me to trust Him more and more.

‘The money is incidental’

I remember a time a few years ago when we were desperately in need of about £12,000- we had several large bills coming up, staff salaries to pay and food that needed to be purchased for the residents as well as tax and maintenance on the residents’ minibus.

We had exactly £100 in our bank account (Mercy UK has never had an overdraft facility nor any credit cards or means to borrow, so when the money runs out, it runs out).

I called a staff prayer meeting and the plan was to pray like we had never prayed before so that God would intervene and provide this sum of money that seemed as big as a mountain to me.

As I was on my way to the prayer meeting in the evening, I heard God speak to me:

“I don’t want you to pray about the money tonight.  I want you to pray for the girls- the money is incidental to me. You need to pray for the freedom, the breakthrough and the healing of each one of those girls I have given into your care.”

It really wasn’t what I wanted to hear- the finances may well be incidental to God, but the lack of money certainly was not incidental to me; it was an all consuming source of panic!  Still, I have known Him long enough to know when I just need to do as I’m told- and so I changed the plan.

That night our staff team interceded for each girl on the programme- we wrote down their names, the struggles they were having and declared freedom from captivity, breakthrough, transformation and healing into each and every one of them.

“What happened the following day changed me forever.  ”

One of the residents came into my office clutching an envelope, which she thrust into my hands. “What’s this?” I asked her.  She smiled and said: “God’s been speaking to me about the fact that I have all my security in my savings and how my security should be in Him. He asked me to give you this.”

I opened the envelope and glanced at the cheque and as I saw the amount my heart missed a beat- £12,000!

Still speechless and staring at the cheque with tears running down my face, I heard the girl say:

“I know it costs £12,000 for a girl to go through the Mercy programme, so I am giving you this to pay for the girl who comes in after me…”

I learnt a fundamental faith lesson that day and  have lived on what that incident taught me ever since.

“‘What God orders, He pays for’”

someone once told me and I can testify to the truth of that sentiment.

He is the God of the impossible- He is a miracle maker, and He delights to show His power through the powerless, His wisdom through the foolish and His purpose through those who thought they would be no more than just an ordinary person living an ordinary life.

 Arianna Walker, CEO, Mercy UK

If you would like to partner with us to see more healing and freedom through our residential programme, thank you so much. We appreciate you more than you know.

Resident Graduation Speech

“MY VOICE THAT’S BEEN SILENCED FOR SO LONG HAS BEEN RESTORED”

- Former Resident

My Mercy journey begun about 6 years ago in 2016 where I spent two months in this beautiful home where I encountered the raw love of God that set me up for the years ahead before I got the opportunity to return to Mercy and complete the program. I had to leave for medical reasons hoping to return as soon as I could.

Years went by with a number of knee surgeries, but God’s healing journey in my life story hasn’t stopped, not for a second from the moment I left the beautiful white gates at Mercy till my return in 2021. He’s been with me all the way, because that is just who He is - faithful and constant every single step of the way, and what I found is that when the journey gets extra messy, He doesn’t run, but stays, yet closer than ever. He’s there, holding your hand with His ever constant beautiful words of reassurance ‘Fear not, I will help you.’

Before I got to return to Mercy, my 2020 threw a massive wall of doubt between me and the God I thought I knew. It was a year of great loss in so many ways, and that threw a massive explosion to the bridge of trust in my own relationship with God. However, there really is no wall He won’t kick down and no lie He won’t tear down.

Over my time at Mercy, His truth continued to rebuild the bridge, brick by brick until the moment where He joined all the dots together and I could see it so clearly, that He has been there all along, He’s never left my side but has been weaving it all together into His beautiful perfect plan. He already knows the final score. And as long as I keep holding on to Him, even though a lot of the times, it looks like a wrestle, there is always victory on the other side when I just dare to hold on for that bit longer.

I’ve learned my Heavenly Father is and will always be true to His Word. Just before I came to Mercy, God has given me promise from Isaiah 66:13 “As a mother tenderly comforts her child, so will I tenderly comfort you, and you will find comfort in Jerusalem [in Mercy]” There was so much more wrapped up in this promise than what I thought I knew. In one of my sessions, I had an encounter that I never thought was be possible. In this encounter, God took me all the way back to the womb- I literally felt as a child within a womb, where He started to declare His truths and His identity over me. It was as if my heart started to beat for the very first time, and I heard His declaration over me so clearly “I am making all things new”. Just like any baby within a womb, He declared over me I am innocent, nurtured and fiercely protected by the Holy Spirit and I felt each one of these truths being true for me, for the very first time in my life.

The next morning He took me right back in to the womb during worship, and He continued to heal and restore me in an embrace by the The Father and Holy Spirit, pouring out the truth of their love, delight and overwhelming joy they felt at my coming. Just like a couple madly in love expecting their first child, their joy and delight over me felt that real and has forever been imprinted on to my new DNA. I am completely His and nothing in this world can change that.

The lie that the Holy Spirit didn’t want me near has totally been eradicated by the truth that having me near has been the greatest desire of her heart and she couldn’t wait to hold me in her arms. I’ve learned that my needs do matter and that self-care is not selfish, but healing and empowering in being able to be there for those around me and build healthier relationships in my life in the long run.

My voice that’s been silenced for so long has been restored. When the enemy roared how damaged I am, the voice of truth came rushing in with the truth ‘By the way... there is noting wrong with you’ ‘It’s not your fault you’ve had to deal with trauma’ ‘It’s not your fault...’ ‘Its NOT your fault!’ ... ‘when others judged, it was NOT your fault’ the things that happened to you ‘It was NOT your fault! How you were dealing with it was NOT your fault- you did the best you knew how to’ ‘And not an inch of Me has ever judged you’. His heart has always been so full of love and compassion for me in and through it all.

Mercy has been my womb time. It was a time of growth and a time of learning to recognise the maternal voice of the Holy Spirit. So that when it’s time to leave in the next few hours, I will be able to recognise the Holy Spirit’s nurturing, guiding and reassuring voice for myself outside of the womb of Mercy. I can walk out with confidence of knowing the Father’s heart and His fierce protection over me. I can walk out with the freedom that I do not have to live bound by my past, but live free in my beautiful covenant love relationship with the One who will lead and guide me on to an Adventure together, beyond anything I could have ever asked thought of or even imagined.

I’ve embraced my healing journey to be a process, so this is not me standing here declaring I am fully healed just because I have completed the program- far from it. I’ve realised I don’t have to control my healing journey, because as Father God told me recently, ‘I am organised, you know... and I know exactly which file to pull out and when. I have not lost sight of your healing journey’. After all, He can do a much better job than I ever could on my own. And as I rest and continue to set my gaze upon Him, the healing will continue to come even when I don’t realise it. Just to abide, rest in and trust Him to heal, lead and guide, and help me become more like Him all along the way.

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