Monthly Archives: September 2025

Thanksgiving for answered prayer for July and August 2025

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Thanksgiving for answered prayer for July and August 2025

God’s Word exhorts us over again to pour our cares, our needs and our hearts out to Him, for He cares for us and desires to give us the desires of our hearts.

Therefore we can confidently bring our requests before Him.

Lamentations 2:19

Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him.

I also want to give Him thanks and praise for all the answered prayers each day, each week, each month and I record the main aspects of this and express my gratitude publically through this blog every second month.

Here is my testimony of answered prayers received during the months of July and August.

To God be all the Glory!!!

In July:

For courage and boldness when out leafleting

For perfect weather for our big Revive party and for surpassing our prayers and expectations with 1500 people!

For helping me finally grieve earlier losses

For allowing me to facilitate and take 2 precious souls through the Freedom in Christ steps

For a restful, restorative and beautiful holiday with friends in Logroño.

For perfect connections and safe travels

For your perfect plan re meds

For inspiring the gift

For safe travels for S and J

For letting us get tickets for the graduation

For bringing C through to a First Class Masters degree and special award

For exposing and healing old bitterness in me.

In August:

For healing my jaw, throat and gums over night

For bringing J safely home again from his big trip

For the double blessing of C doing jobs here at our house

That D and A have put down their poison

For restoring S mojo

For wholesome meetings and connections with family and friends over the Summer

For taking S’s pain away

For blessed sleepover and adventures with the children

For success pickling veg and making jams with our harvests

For directing the affairs of ReStore and Your plans for the future

That I could creosote the sheds and gates and Conor and all of us have done a great work in the garden

For helping me sell the trailer tent so easily

For blessing S’s party for supporters and her connections

For inspiring me to share Your parables with the children

For blessing L with pro-bono experience

That I could help R with the videos

That You are teaching me about authority

That D is on a medical research trial

For J helping C to organise and monitor his finances

That S is healed and needs no further treatment

For helping me arrange a time to go to Vienna

For breaking that generational curse off my family

For your constant mercy!

For proving over again that You work all things for good for those who submit to You.

Always I am aware that God has answered so many prayers that I never even recorded, that He is constantly working in and through my life for His glory.

BERJAYA
beloved friends on a lovely holiday

So much to give thanks for!!!!

Pick me! Pick me!

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BERJAYA
BERJAYA
BERJAYA
BERJAYA

This year I’ve done a lot of fruit picking – picking several pounds of blackberries, picking blackcurrants from the garden (all these mainly for jam).

I pick some of the raspberries for raspberry vinegar, but the most ripe straight for my mouth.

Picking beetroots, broccoli and runner beans for a tasty vegetable, beetroots for pickling.

Picking rhubarb for crumbles, compote or fools.

I imagined the blackcurrants jostling and pushing themselves forward, shouting ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ Then I thought of them saying ‘Second thoughts, don’t pick me, pick him – he’s so much bigger and juicier… I want to stay here where I’m comfortable!’

There is the ambivalence – I want to be picked, but if I’m picked, what will be required of me? What will be expected? If I’m picked, what sacrifice will be necessary, what hard work?

Am I up to the task? Can I succeed? Will I fail?

I’m comfortable where I am; if I’m picked, will it be worthwhile?

(Of course this may be only how my mind works)

I was reading Esther’s story yesterday.

She was an unlikely candidate to be queen, but God’s favour was on her – and so the King picked her. She was courageous and obedient. Against the odds, Esther stepped up in faith to the task assigned to her.

She was picked, equipped and placed there for ‘such a time as this’.

Jesus deliberately picked his unlikely band of followers.

I can imagine that each of them questioned why they had been picked and why Jesus had not chosen someone more worthy, more intelligent, more wise, more accomplished, more popular, more able, more MORE!

He picked them knowing their strengths and their weaknesses. He picked them for a specific assignment and equipped them to fulfill it.

We have all been picked. God has chosen us to be His disciples.

God knows why He picked us – for what purpose He designed us.

Like you, God has picked me for a particular assignment.

I might look at the assignment and think ‘Don’t pick me, pick him – he’s so much more able than I!’ But God knows what I’m capable of.

And maybe, just maybe I am here for such a time as this?

Most Fridays, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is PICK.

I do read through my script afterwards to correct my mistakes; to check scripture references and to find an appropriate image to illustrate the topic.

To read other FMF posts on this subject click BELOW.

Join the link-up and read other posts here​

What have I taught?

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BERJAYA
learning from adults

FMF: Legacy

The legacy I leave to my family and friends and to the world, will be to do with the way I have lived my life.

What have I taught my children and those around me?

What I have done, what I have not done, how I behave, how I have loved (or not loved) – how I respond in adversity, conflict or under stress; how I grapple to forgive and to ask for forgiveness. All these ways I walk the walk and not just talk the talk – these are what will influence those around me.

This will be my legacy.

Children watch and learn. What do I want them to learn from me?

Others watch and learn.

Somebody once said that I might be the only version of Jesus that the next person will ever see!!

What will they see?

What do I want them to see?

What did I learn from my parents and from the generations before me?

I will reap what I sow. Others may also reap what I have sown.

If I sow good seeds, others will reap good fruit.

If I sow bad seed, others will reap bad fruit.

My church celebrated its centenary last year. Previous generations of praying souls left a legacy of provision to us. We reap good fruit from the prayers, hard work and good seed sown by those who went before us.

I am grateful for the legacy left by the praying souls in that church before us.

I am grateful for the legacy left by the disciples of Jesus – all the letters they wrote to the churches that we have access to and which guide and bless the church with the Word and heart of God for His people.

It reminds me of what Paul said – I pass on to you what I received from the Lord…

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 (NIV):

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

May we be faithful to pass on what we learn from the Lord.

Let us spend time at the feet of Jesus, so we speak how He does and love as He does.

Let us pass on the Good News, pass on the love, the mercy, the truth, the forgiveness, the healing, the ways of the Kingdom of God that truly matter.

People will notice.

Let them see Jesus.

This will be our legacy to the world.

Acts 4:13–14 NIV

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.

I want to have as my legacy: For what I received from the Lord, I also passed on to you.

And I want people to take note that although I am an ordinary woman, it will be obvious that I have been with Jesus.

BERJAYA
passing the baton

Most Fridays, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is LEGACY.

I do read through my script afterwards to correct my mistakes; to check scripture references and to find an appropriate image to illustrate the topic.

To read other FMF posts on this subject click BELOW.

​Join the link-up and read other posts here​

Put it behind you

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FMF: Behind

I get behind in many things! I set myself tasks and then run out of time and find myself behind and having to play catch-up.

Today was a catch-up day – catching up on accounts, on Bible Reading plans, on returning messages and ticking off a few of those little admin tasks.

Maybe I set myself too many tasks, but usually I catch up eventually. Sometimes however, I plan too much and have to cut my losses and let go of the least important tasks, so I can move on.

There are some things though that are behind me and need to stay behind me.

There are mistakes I made, lies I believed, real and false guilt I’ve repented of and old habits which were in the past and need to stay in the past.

But sometimes the enemy of our souls reminds me of things from the past and puts them back in front of me, in my face, in my way.

The sins of the old self, which are now washed in the blood of Jesus, forgiven and forgotten by the Father., the evil one would stick them under my nose for me to trip over, cause confusion and block my path.

But no! I once took them to the cross and I need to leave them there at the cross. They are behind me.

I am a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come.

Though the evil one would remind me, pull me down and discourage me, rather than wallow in shame, I have learned to take those thoughts captive and tell that lying condemnation to: ‘Get behind me Satan!’

Matt 16:23

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

BERJAYA
(painting of ‘Get behind me Satan’ by Ilya Repin 1895)

If it is behind me, it is not blocking my path and I can’t fall over it!

If it is behind me, I can move forward without restrictions.

If the obstacle is behind me, I can see the path, see the vision that God has given me and walk unhindered towards it.

Phil 3:13 – 14

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Lord, let us forget was is behind us and let us see clearly the path You have set for us and move forward, heavenward, in Your strength, in Your power and in Your freedom. In Jesus’ name, I pray.

Most Fridays, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is BEHIND

I do read through my script afterwards to correct my mistakes; to check scripture references and to find an appropriate image to illustrate the topic.

To read other FMF posts on this subject click BELOW.

Join the link-up and read other posts here​