Passport to Walking by the spirit E-Book

Mikael Reale

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Passport
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 86

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

God is not stingy with supernatural or natural interventions to guide his children in their daily lives, as long as they take the time to pay attention.

Leseprobe

To all those who seek …

Table of Contents

Foreword

‘Indeed’

“The desire and the Power”

Insights, opportunities... And sometimes revelations!

Opportunities

And sometimes revelations

A vision for the Mediterranean

“The grand voyage”

The devil in the storm

Too many lights... Kill the Light!

When the spirit listens to the Spirit!

Wanting to do His will…

Some thoughts on a shipwreck

Two very similar shipwrecks!

A time, times... & Kairos!

A renewed mind

A compass for your journey in God’s plan!

Conclusion

Foreword

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved traveling. When I was a child, my friends wanted to become policemen, firemen or do what Dad was doing, but I wanted to be a seaman in the merchant navy!

At the age of 9, I had my first opportunity to get on a sailboat, and it was a revelation. I was made for it and that’s what I hoped to do with my life. When I was 16, I met a French singer, writer and sailor, Antoine, in Tahiti. I had already read his book “Bord à bord” and he had become my hero. I went on to devour all his books. Two months later, while running away from a violent father, I secretly boarded a French cargo ship in the port of Papeete, the Cézanne, on which I traveled 1,250 kilometers to Mururoa atoll before being sent home to my parents in an air force plane.

In the years that followed, I traveled alone, hitchhiking, flying and sailing. Earning a living along the way playing guitar in cafés and restaurants, I crossed all of Europe, then the USA and finally the South Pacific on a 14-meter sailboat. After many adventures and misadventures, it was in New Zealand that God caught up with me in 1984. (The full story is in Mikael’s book: Chased by Your Grace).

So it was quite natural that, in 1986, after getting married, Cathy and I set off across the Caribbean on a sailboat we’d bought in Martinique. I couldn’t see my life any other way than traveling, and preferably on a sailboat! I refused to be one of those sedentary landlubbers stuck in a normal lifestyle!

However, one day in the summer of 1987, while Cathy and I were in northern Quebec, I realized the price Christ had paid on the cross, and I gave my life entirely to him, rather than inviting him to participate when I needed or wanted Him to. I had understood and accepted that God wanted me to entrust my destiny to Him, and to do so, He was asking me to offer Him my love of the sea and travel as a sacrifice.

This was surely the hardest thing in my life to give up! Although I agreed to obey immediately, it actually took me more than three years to truly let go of it in both my heart and my mind. But finally, I woke up one morning with a passion far stronger than that of the sea. I was simply passionate about the Kingdom of God!

Cathy and I decided to go to Bible College together and serve God full-time. We had two little boys and the idea of opening a shelter for drug addicts in Savoie. I was trained as a drug prevention worker, but we wanted to combine this with biblical training to anchor the project in a spiritual framework.

So it was with great surprise that in 1990, at a Christian convention, I realized that God wanted to send me into the mission field. At first, I didn’t believe it and even resisted the idea. Wasn’t the devil trying to make me give up my good resolutions? Hadn’t I obeyed God by giving up my life of travel?

It was only five years later, as part of the ministry in which I was engaged, that I left with my wife and three children for the island of Madagascar.

A few months before our departure, in February 1995, when I had decided to spend a week in fasting and prayer, a team-mate came to pray with me. God’s presence was particularly evident that day, and I was soon given a prophetic word: “Since you trusted me and agreed to sacrifice your Isaac to me, I’ll give him back to you one day, and you’ll serve me with him. Then the brother added: “I see you on a sailboat, traveling to bring the Kingdom to the nations. I don’t know if this is important, but I see that it’s a boat, with the aft mast higher than the foremast”...

This detail, which may seem insignificant, was not. A few years earlier, while sailing across the South Pacific, I had drawn the sailboat I’d dreamed of building for myself. It was a schooner, with the aft mast higher than the foremast... It was like a wink from God, telling me: “you see, this is me talking to you”.

However, I had so surrendered my passion for sailing and travel to God that this revelation was greeted with faith, certainly, but without any excitement. I couldn’t make the connection between sailing and ministry. For me, ministry had taken on far more interest than my former passion. I put this aside for the next 5 years.

For our wedding anniversary in 2000, we took a few days’ vacation from Reunion Island to Mauritius. People from the congregation looked after the children for us, and those four days did us a lot of good. One evening, as we were walking along the seafront, I saw a sailboat at anchor and it was like a revelation. I could now, make the connection between God’s promise to give me a sailboat and the ministry for which I had given my life.

At that time, I already felt cramped in the ministry of a local church, but I couldn’t see myself traveling and living out of a pair of suitcases as an on-the-go minister. Besides, I like to build relationships by taking my time with people. That’s hardly possible when you spend two days visiting a church you won’t see again for months or years.

But a boat was like a house that would follow us, allowing us to be at home while traveling, and so be able to spend weeks, even months, in one place, working for the Kingdom of God, without being completely uprooted each time.

But even though I could now understand the potential of a boat in my ministry, we had three children between the ages of 7 and 12, and I couldn’t see myself taking them on this kind of journey.

Two years later, after some difficult times in our mission work, God granted us a sabbatical in England. We were in a process of restoration, and the very thought of ministry had drifted far from my daily life. Despite this, one evening in a house meeting, two people gave us prophetic words.

The first was that God had led us into a sheltered bay after a storm to restore our sails and rigging. God would then send us back to the mission...

The second said: “Mikael and Cathy, God has anointed you for the islands, and you have received this call to respond to Isaiah’s verse ‘For the islands hope in me, and the ships of Tarsis are in the lead, to bring back your children from afar’. This is your mission field. This is where you must go!

We did indeed go on mission again, but not to the islands. Two years in the USA was not a very pleasant time, in fact, and there is much to say about it - we’ll come back to that later.

Then we returned to France, and planted a church in Toulon, where we served until 2015.

After several years, we were exhausted and disillusioned by this pastoral work. Cathy and I felt that we had come to the end of a season, and that we would soon have to leave again. In January, as we had done every year for 2 decades, we undertook a Daniel fast in order to hear and understand God’s will for the new year.

At the end of this fast, God reactivated the prophecy I had received 20 years earlier concerning the sailboat! My son Maël’s wife, who lives in Australia, had called us and said: ‘Dad, it’s time to go! And God is going to give you a sailboat for it’.

I was overcome by a wave of joy and faith! We felt that not only were we entering a new season, for our life, our ministry... but that the word about the sailboat given 20 years earlier was now coming true.

As a friend with whom I shared this project remarked at the time: ‘It’s a new season for the Church and for those who serve God. When I think of you, I always have one small regret: you’re too sedentary. But you’re an adventurer! Secondly, lots of ministries are going to be really “out of the box” in these new times. They’re going to do it in relation to who they really are, not in accordance with the mold they’re being pressed into’.

As I listened to him, I realized that this project was really us! We were called to it, we were gifted for it, and we had offered our lives to God for it! ‘Delight yourself in the Lord... And He will give you what your heart desires’.

It was clear that, as usual, we were ready to drop everything to follow the Lord!

But to do what? And how?

‘Indeed’

When my daughter-in-law in Australia gave us this word, I laughed and felt like Sarah when she heard the announcement of her future pregnancy. “A sailboat? But... I can’t anymore... and for what? Anyway, we didn’t have a penny. I quickly checked our bank account and realized the obvious: I had the sum of 47 euros available!

Since our departure for Madagascar in 1995, Cathy and I had decided never to be in debt again. A loan was not an option for the purchase of a sailboat.