About a month ago now, I had a really amazing and lovely encounter with God.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting it to change my life quite so dramatically, but it has. The only thing I can say, is that my eyes have been opened to this whole new world, a whole new spiritual reality. And my goodness, for me now, there’s no going back.

In the last few weeks, in addition to some great teaching at church, I’ve also been doing an online course by Jarrod Cooper called Moving in prophecy. I didn’t know what to expect (and knowing the speed my life operates at, if I’d even finish it) but slowly, slowly catchy monkey, and hey presto, a few weeks on, I’m loving it.

But in reality, all this teaching is great, but pretty useless if I wasn’t willing to take a big, fat step out of my comfort zone and put it to use. But who wants to leap out of warm, safe comfiness? Well, not me.

But after a really interesting experience the other night (long story!), this morning I got up, poured a coffee and then got settled into a really lovely quiet time. Time just seemed to melt away and I remember at one point, praying, ‘Lord, show me something? I don’t know what….but something?’

Almost instantly, this picture began to form in my mind. I was a bit puzzled, as it didn’t make much sense, but later, for the sake of keeping a record, I jotted it down in my journal. I figured that if it was just me, being silly, well no one would ever know, so why not?

At 8.30am this morning, this is what I wrote;

Just been praying and had this picture in my mind. I was at work (in the room we’re meeting in this morning) and it was like there were wisps of black smoke creeping across the floor. The smoke was getting thicker and most people couldn’t see it, but we felt the effects…the coughing, the choking, the watery eyes.

But then I could also see like these warriors in white (the word ‘centurion’ popped into my head) and they weren’t on duty but they’d been asleep, they were waking up. It was like I could hear their armour rattling as they started to stand up slowly, look around and see what was going on. Didn’t think they were angels but more like a picture of people’s ‘inner man’, their inner spirits. Their inner spirit has been asleep and the smoke has been creeping in but these ‘centurions’, the inner spirits of people are starting to wake up, to be brought to attention. And oh my, when they do, when they wake up and stand to attention and start to really see what is happening, the forces of darkness will be pushed back.

NO idea if any of this is from God but it’s what I saw in my mind, so thought I’d write it down.

Oh, Wikipedia says, ‘centurions usually led from the front, occupying a position on the front line….interesting.

So yep, that was my (rambling) journal entry and I later left the house, not thinking too much about it. I headed straight for the building (the one I’d seen in this mental picture) and to our quarterly Leaders’ Day. These are great days, worship, teaching from a guest speaker, lunch and other good things. Today’s speaker was Steve Uppal and he started by saying he was going to go slightly off-piste on his planned message (always a good sign!).

He then started to talk about the need for God’s people to strengthen their ‘inner man’, to focus on the internal, rather than the external, to wake up the warriors, to start advancing the kingdom of God. He used this word several times, ‘warriors’ and the whole message was grounded in this idea that we need to wake up, realise that the time is here, it’s now, it’s time to get a bigger vision, to get moving.

I was on social media duty, so I was live tweeting and I nearly dropped the iPad in absolute awe at what was happening. This is exactly what I’d seen in this mental picture, curled up under a fluffy blanket, at 8.30am this morning. Just after I’d asked God to show me something, anything.

The amazing, lovely part is that the picture I saw, was in the exact room that Steve was preaching in. Did I get a sneaky glimpse into the ‘warriors’ who would later be waking up in that room?

Hours later, I’m still in a bit of a befuddled daze. Feeling excited and scared by the possibility that when you grab a bit of faith and ask God to do something, he really does answer. I mean, seriously?! Who knew?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always known this was possible. I just haven’t always known it was possible for me. But more importantly, aside from the amazingness of it all, the truth of the picture and the message is now soldered into my heart.

Have we been asleep?

I know I have been.

For months, maybe years, I’ve been wandering along in a nice, comfortable place. I knew what God had done for me, I knew there was way, way more, but I felt like I was doing ok and and was maybe a bit too busy to go any deeper. I felt God was near, I was doing fine, that was good enough for now, wasn’t it?

But inexplicably one day, I get thrown out of my nice, warm nest, by a prophetic word from a visiting pastor, and suddenly, I can see how much I’ve been missing.

And there’s no going back.

It’s time for all of us to waken up our inner warriors.

There’s a battle to be won.

I don’t want to be found sleeping on the job.