I was twenty five
when I knew I had been led to take membership in the Apostolic church. But we
seemed to be a declining fellowship. My urgent prayer was, Lord, may we be
Apostolic not just in name, but in experience.
One day our pastor, a prophet, brought a word that I knew
was in answer to this prayer.
‘You will know days of heaven on earth.’ What did this
mean, and could this ever come to pass?
Recently visited by a young Ghanaian pastor, I was able to
recount a time when I knew this had indeed come to pass.
After some years teaching among the needy children of
London’s East End, I had been sent to work with the Apostolic missionaries in
the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. It was while trekking out to the villages
that God had spoken to me through the verse in the Bible, ‘I and the children
God has given me,’ and knew my call was to these children too. I became the
‘Little children’s mother.’
And not just there, for in time that door closed, and after
three years teaching back in UK, I was sent to Ghana, to be responsible for the
Sunday School work. It was here that this amazing word of prophecy was
fulfilled.
From small beginnings – delay in my departure for Ghana
meant time to attend some training courses. A three month training course in
Switzerland with Child Evangelism Fellowship became of great significance, for
a Jamaican missionary with CEF had spent six months in Ghana, just prior to my
arrival, and because I too had trained with them, the teachers welcomed me with open arms.
The children of my village loved to visit me and so sprang
up my first Sunday School. Thus I was able to teach the teachers, not with
examples from UK or even PNG, but from my own experiences with Ghanaian
children, and lessons I had not only taught, but learned.
I felt it so important that we should teach the children,
not in English, the national language, but in their own mother tongue, their
heart language. Also that we did not need to buy expensive flannelgraphs, which
might take hours to cut out, but to use whatever visual aids were to hand.
Fast forward to the time we were able to have special Sunday
School weekends in the various areas. Friday and Saturday we enjoyed lessons
with these wonderfully zealous teachers, but then, on Sunday morning at a set
time the teachers, two by two had their own groups of children. They had
prepared their own ‘home made’ visual aids and were thrown in the deep end.
I wish you had been there, at the end of the service, to
enter into the joy of those teachers.
‘Oh, Maame Adwoa,’ they told me. ‘I did not think children could
understand, but they understood.’
They all had similar testimonies. Oh, how we praised the
Lord. I thought I might have been exhausted at the end of a strenuous weekend,
but no. I had been renewed in strength as an eagle.
Now, how delighted my Ghanaian friends had been to hear my
story, and I to tell it, for that occasion
had been to me the fulfilment of that prophecy, spoken so long ago. But
now, through the telling, I am beginning to realise that God had not meant it
to be a once only experience.
Those ‘star dust’ assemblies, as I call them, in our local
schools, when I know each child is drinking in the word of God; those special
times when we feel the Holy Spirit moving in or midst; or when, sharing with
someone about the goodness of God, you are aware that He is there, beside us,
rejoicing with us, these too are days of heaven on earth.
Yes, we are not in heaven yet, but we are surely among
those of whom it says we are having a foretaste of the powers of the world to
come.(Hebrews 6:5) And God had promised
me ‘days,’ not a single day, so I don’t have to look back to past experiences.
I may have passed eighty and nearing ninety, but I am not too old to still know
days of heaven on earth, and to experience the powers of the world to come.
I know so many of you who patiently read my blog have your
own wonderful testimonies, but God is reminding me, and I trust you too, that
he has more; yes, even days of heaven upon earth.
P.S. As I pass this word on to be put on my blogspot, I
have been questioning, for I have not been able to find these words – ‘Days of
heaven on earth’ in the Bible. But then I realised; - we are praying for this every time we repeat the
Lord’s Prayer:-
‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.’
This is not just a prayer
for a time afar off; it is for the present; for today. Amen
