Wayne and I are very morning people. Just as soon as the sun peeks its shining face along the horizon, we are up and yes, cheerful. Very cheerful. It is unusual for two people in the bond of marriage to BOTH love morning… to both be cheerful in the early hours… That has been a very nice thing about our marriage.

But for some reason this morning, we both woke up exhausted and so discouraged. We felt hopeless. Useless. Without a future. It was so weird! And then we remembered… we are in Jerusalem. There is so much spiritual warfare here. You can literally feel forces of good and evil pull against each other here. Somehow we felt caught up in the fray of it all this morning. 

We made sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, and the heaviness lifted. We just had to touch God afresh this morning. Our cups from yesterday had gone dry.

No matter where one lives there is spiritual warfare with which to contend, and offering the extra prayer and praise to the Lord enables us beyond our abilities to cope for sure.  But this morning we are reminding ourselves anew that our warfare is not carnal or of this earth, against flesh and blood…. rather against principalities and darkness in high places. Those forces seem so real here. It’s like living in the states like living in Disney Land. There is a bubble or surreality there, and that “bubble” is stripped off here. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I am so glad that God is greater in me than in the world I see. Because I did not feel this today. I felt otherwise. Everything about the kingdom of God is about a world that is unseen. And that is what contending for our faith is all about.

Here’s some of our progress… the kind you can see with your eyes…

Small beginning on the living room…

All these windows and door face Mt. Zion and the Mt. of Olives…

We are not despising small beginnings.

More to come…