A GOOD NEWS STORY FROM IRELAND AND ENGLAND

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The fire of God is spreading across the United Kingdom. From England to Ireland, Christians are witnessing a “shift” and a new hunger for God in the once spiritually dry region. “Something has shifted in the last 6 months, and it feels like it’s a rising river,” said Pastor Craig Cooney who leads Hope Church in Northern Ireland. He believes the spiritual drought brought on by the pandemic is over. “Between 2020 and 2023 I found myself often saying that I’ve never seen the church at such a low ebb that it just felt like we were going through the motions post-Covid, that churches were struggling, their numbers were down. But not only were their numbers down, there was just a lack of zeal, passion, enthusiasm, and growth.

In the latter days, the Lord Will Pour Out His Spirit
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” Joel 2:28-29

Something shifted around the start of this year and it’s difficult to describe or define,” Cooney said. Cooney, who also reaches more than 100,000 people on Instagram says the most noticeable change is a tangible presence of God and an increase in the number of healings. “There’s this sense of ‘God is in the room’ that has been birthed out of and has probably birthed prayer, an increase in prayer.

We have seen that in our own church. About 20% of our church now come to our weekly prayer meeting at 6:00 PM on a Wednesday. It’s not a convenient time, but it’s just an hour of solid intercession. And there’s just people crying out for the lost people, crying out for their families,” he said. “And every week we are getting testimonies of healing from people who might not even have believed in divine healing six months ago. I mean, it’s not the people you might expect. It’s the people who when they say they’re healed, they’re healed because they wouldn’t be making this stuff up,” Cooney said.

In June, Rev. Franklin Graham brought his “God Loves You Tour” to Glasgow, where more than 7,000 people turned out with many giving their lives to Christ. “God loves you and He’s willing to forgive our sins but we have to come to Him, His way and that’s through the cross of Jesus Christ,” Graham told the crowd.

One young Scottish man in attendance described the experience like this: “I went up tonight because Franklin was so powerful in his word, He said ‘Get out of your seat,’ and I had to get out of my seat! I had to get there! I didn’t realize there was going to be 2-3,000 people behind me. It gives me anxiety, but I didn’t care, I’m going to give it to the cross,” he exclaimed.

Rev. Liz Doyle, founder and director of “She Leads America” just returned from England where she prayed with a group inside Windsor Castle. “And as we were in St. George’s Chapel praying, I felt the Lord speak to me and say, ‘I’m going to bring revival into this place.’ We were there for three days and three nights with 30 of our British counterparts,” Doyle said. “Genesis Chapter 28 is what the Vicar was reading from that day. And right next to us is Queen Elizabeth’s grave.

I felt that when he began to read Genesis chapter 28:13-15, it says on the ground where you’re laid, I’m going to bless the generations. And I felt the Lord saying, ‘I am going to begin to work in your children’s lives, Queen Elizabeth, and they’re going to be a blessing to the world.’”

Doyle and her husband pastored in England for 25 years and for her, this was a full-circle moment. She felt the Lord saying, “I’m going to bring you back to the land and give you the things I’ve promised.” “My husband and I had been church planting in England for 25 years, and we left about 25 years ago. So those two things came together, and I understood it to be that the Lord was going to move in St. George’s Chapel,” Doyle said.

Source: CBN

FORMER LESBIAN PROFESSOR ON WHAT CHANGED HER HEART

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A former professor of women’s studies at Syracuse University recently shared her personal journey from lesbian feminist to Christ-follower. During an episode of The Becket Cook Show, Rosaria Butterfield explained how converting to Christianity radically transformed her life, identity, and relationships.

She met a Presbyterian pastor who played an integral part in opening her eyes and heart to the Lord. “I talk about what it was like to meet a pastor, who was my neighbour when I was a lesbian, feminist, activist, professor,” Butterfield said. “I met Ken Smith, the pastor who the Lord used in my conversion. I thought this man is really smart. He and his wife Floy welcomed me into their world and they came into my world and they didn’t act as though I was polluting them.

Early on in our friendship, Ken said to me ‘there’s a difference between acceptance and approval and if you can live with that difference, I can live with that difference.’” Butterfield started reading the Bible and routinely met with Pastor Ken and Floy, which allowed her to discuss situations from a Christian perspective. “I saw the way his house functioned, it was amazing. We would talk about hard and heavy things. We would read the Bible, we would pray, and would sing songs. I couldn’t help but notice there was an aesthetic, palpable difference between my house and Ken Smith’s house.” She continued, “My house was filled with anxiety and constant frenetic, political activism. At Ken’s house, they would talk about hard things, but at a certain point, they would open the Bible. They’d pray and they would do this thing called ‘leave it at the cross.’ Then they would go on and laugh, feast, and have fun.

I was intrigued by that. I came to the Bible with a long list of things I was mad about that I needed to work through.” “In two years, I read the Bible seven times. I wanted to understand why Bible-believing Christians believed the things they did. This man-God, Jesus was and is compelling beyond description. I wondered two things: could I trust Him and is it true? And that was really the turning point. That’s when I decided that I needed to stop working with Ken Smith.” Butterfield explained that she came to a critical moment in her spiritual journey where the truth of the Gospel was visible and that frightened her. “At that point, Ken and Floy did not become stalkers but they came very close. They weren’t going to let go of me,” she said. “I stopped reading the Bible for research and started reading it for personal questions of truth, life, and death.

It was at that point that I was convicted of a number of sins. I was convicted of the sin of somehow thinking that I had been on the side of truth, justice, diversity, reparations, kindness, and compassion when it was really Jesus who was persecuted the whole time.” “I started going to church, I just showed up one day,” Butterfield said. “I discovered that sermons were this totally different thing and they would really force me to think about things that I hadn’t thought about before. I realized that part of why I didn’t understand how to be a godly woman was because I didn’t understand how to be a woman, which was hilarious because I’m a professor of women’s studies at the time,” she pointed out. “I was a mess, and I committed my life to Christ because I believed He was true and real and I had no idea what He was going to do with a mess like me.”

“Conversion put me in complicated and comprehensive chaos. I sometimes wonder, when I hear other Christians pray for the salvation of the “lost,” if they realize that this comprehensive chaos is the desired end of such prayers. Often, people asked me to describe the “lessons” that I learned from this experience. I can’t. It was too traumatic. Sometimes in crisis, we don’t really learn lessons. Sometimes the result is simpler and more profound: sometimes our character is simply transformed.” —Rosaria Butterfield

40 STORIES: POWERFUL TESTIMONIES OF AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL BROTHERS AND SISTERS

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Are you ready to journey with Jesus behind the scenes? See some of the amazing ways that Jesus leads the 40 Stories story-gathering team. Then watch this video.

40 STORIES: Real people… Extraordinary stories. As you watch these amazing stories you come to the realisation that only God could have brought about the transformation in these peoples lives. They are great witnessing tools. Share them widely. I will be putting them up one at a time on this website so watch out for them under the title 40 STORIES.