I had to laugh today at work. During lunchtime someone said 'There's a heatwave forecast for next week'. Never before have I heard 19 Deg referred to as a heatwave. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry! Oh well, perhaps one day, that too will feel like a heatwave to me ;-)
My beautiful friend Mara arrived from Switzerland to see me. We spoke for hours and hours catching up on the tales of the past year. A theme began to emerge as we spoke. Two weeks ago I lost my very precious watch. At Bethel I heard many stories of God restoring lost things to people. The most famous one is the 'I want my knife back' story. Bob Jones had lost a sentimental swiss army knife in a hotel room. In frustration he shouted 'I want my knife back!'. Immediately, the knife appeared in mid air and dropped on the bed. That has become a famous saying at Bethel referring to anything that we want restored back to us. Hence much 'I want my watch back' praying has been happening over the last two weeks. I keep getting the sense that God wants to restore more that just my watch, but also the time that has been lost and the dreams that have been lost over the last decade. These were my thoughts on the morning that Mara arrived. I decided to listen to the easter servce on iBethel tv. To my great delight, Bill Johnson starts telling the 'I want my knife back story'! He concludes with another testimony of a guy who's laptop has been stolen. He was more concerned with the dissertation that was on his laptop than the laptop itself. So he prayed 'I want my dissertation back'. He then bought a new laptop and when he opened it, all the files from his original laptop were on the new one. Amazing!
Then a few hours later, Mara, without prompting, starts to tell me the story of someone who cycled passed her in the middle of Aarau, Switzerland and whipped her bag out of her bike basket. In shock she shouted 'I want my bag back! I want my knife back!' as the thief sped away. A little while later, while she was describing him to the police, there, right in front of her, the thief cycled past. The police caught him and there you have it, she got her bag back.
A short while later, I looked on facebook and there was a post by my good friend Kirby. They'd lost their ipod touch 6 months ago. We'd prayed 'I want my ipod touch back!'. Miraculously, her friend found it under the guest bed where they had actually looked about seven times before. All this on the same day. I'm starting to hear a message coming through. God is interested in restoring things that have been lost or stolen.
Jesus, I want my watch back!
