the past two months!

   I've been in California since early September. That's two months and two weeks. It's more than strange to think that I've been in America for that amount of time when it seems like I've spent at least half of my life here. When I think of the experiences I've had here since arriving, it makes the time feel condensed in the sense that so many things have happened. Encounters that have rocked me and will continue to stay with me beyond Bethel, friendships that have been established, grown, and deepened, places I've seen and adventures I've had, teaching that continually challenges me and causes things that I've forgotten about to stir and rise to the surface, dreams that are being reawakened... in such a short amount of time. There is something about the environment that Bethel have created that brings about an acceleration to the transformation that is already taking place within people. The covering that is over this place makes it feel safe, it's like a greenhouse that cultivates the process that God delights in.

   There is a lot to write down to share what's been happening within me (and a lot to process through) but I'll keep it simple for my sake else I'll just share the whole lot. Some of the areas that I've been receiving breakthrough in are in relationships, the importance of community, my identity, and the dreams that I have.

   In relationships, I have been very... casual with the way I deal things. I used to share the things I treasured to people that I didn't have great relationship with and the extreme of that almost using those deep things as bargaining chips so that they would trust me. I misplaced my trust in the expectation of what I hoped the friendship would become rather than building trust in reality. I didn't realise the value of what I was sharing, the weight of my words, and my own value. Conversely, with people I knew and trusted I held back what was on my heart for fear that they may reject me. God has been really undoing those patterns and making me more aware of boundaries, and being wise with the things I share and don't share with people. Boundaries are so important in the way that you are guarding your heart whilst keeping that beautiful tension of being vulnerable in relationships that you have invested in, and with people that you have built trust with.

Sidenote: I'm learning what it will mean to be in a covenant relationship, and asking questions, and God is awakening this new dimension of genuine thrill and curiosity for friendships, relationships, marriage.. but erm, I'll leave that topic on the shelf for now.
   There is a whole realm with relationships and vulnerability that I've been finding breakthrough in and understanding the importance that community plays within the local church, the body as a whole, and my life. What is incredible to me, and what is truly a blessing, is that my relationship with my mum has never been better despite the distance. It has blossomed in this season (and will continue to blossom) after the years of bending and painful pruning. The past is a poor reflection of what it is like now: we could easily spend hours of time sharing what is in on our hearts on Skype, we are vulnerable, conversation is easy and genuine, and we crack each other up. Mostly because I'm hilarious but I just think it's really that we are learning to really love each other. What is even more great is, and I'm sure I've shared this with a few people, is that the same breakthrough that I am getting - she is too! I see my being here more than just for myself but I represent my family, my church, my city, and greater than that, England.

   One major, major breakthrough I am getting is how I see myself, and most importantly learning to believe and live in the reality of how He sees me. I mentioned about 'receiving' breakthrough, the key word being receiving. The season I'm in is about learning to receive breakthrough through rest, through knowing that I am a son. I can't perform my way into sonship, or inheritance, because the Father already knows me and sees me. That revelation is one that is really beginning to shape the way I view myself, and the way I view things around me. I am beginning to learn myself.

   Being here and being introduced into an atmosphere of more obvious supernatural activity I've found that God loves to meet us where we are at. He started convicting me about how He is speaking all the time but about how I don't actually turn my ear towards Him, and since then I've started to consciously make myself aware of His presence and what He is doing because He loves to speak. Since being here I've also had several encounters that have begun to shape the way I live. Encounter means to meet with someone or something violently, to be taken by surprise, and to meet with face to face. I have had encounters with God where I truly met with Him, felt His heart and I don't feel like I do justice to the things I've felt when I try to explain or vocalise those encounters but I know that every time I've left marked by something. Each encounter with Him is an invitation to go deeper with that encounter - with God, everything is infinite and eternal. (I'm not sure whether or not that made sense but I just felt to include that before I moved on.)
   In a community of so many passionate and hungry people, I thought I would have made a few good friends that I could relate to and get along with. The reality is so much greater than what I would have dreamed of. I honestly didn't realise that friendship, being part of the same body and the same community, being truly brothers and sisters with people could look like this. I realise it's only been two and a half months but I have connected with people that I know I will run with, some people that have part of the same heart and vision as me, with the same passions, as well as others that have different callings but I've built relationship with. I don't know how to explain the significant change that community has had on me since being here. It is so important. I am blessed to have friends like these. Truly. Ah, I wish I could articulate the feelings that move in  my heart of how fortunate I am to have people that want to invest and believe in me and want me to invest and love on them. There are too many words to express but few that capture the feeling of knowing that you are really someone's friend. It's weird and possibly awkward to even say but that's where I'm at and I embrace what God is doing in terms of trusting, being vulnerable, being safe, and being known in community.

   As well as that, I feel that God is stretching the capacity I have in terms of gifting and moving in the prophetic. What's funny is that I thought God would be dealing with my identity first then the gifts but He is doing it at the same time to make me realise that actually, the prophetic isn't who I am. Healing, signs and wonders are not who I am, nor do they affect who I am. I am first and foremost, a son. From that flows all of the Kingdom and what it brings. God is really making me realise the value of what I carry, the significance of who I am (as there hasn't been, there never will be, and there is, no one like me), and how important it is that I bring whatever I have (even if it's five loaves and two fish) to the table so that He can multiply it. I am finding my feet in ministering out of a place of just being Judd. Genuinely and authentically myself.

   A month ago, Beni Johnson shared to our class about taking ownership of Redding and falling in love with her, and I feel like God has done that in my heart. There is a love there for a city that needs to be loved and it can be done simply by giving tips to waiters and waitresses, helping people with packing their groceries... all done through love but having bigger effects like impacting someone's life through an act of kindness and even reversing the spirit of poverty of what used to be called Poverty Flats. My heart still belongs to England but I feel that I can say with sincerity that right now, Redding is my home.
   What's encouraging is that God has honoured the earnest prayer of my heart being prepared before leaving Welwyn Garden City. I have felt no homesickness or longing to be home at all because I realised that I need to be invested in the place that I'm in right now. But even more than that, He's teaching me to live in the 'now' because every moment that is in front of you is worth all of your attention. He is so good.

   I think part of it is leaving what I've known as home for the first time, stepping out and actually living by myself without my mum or my friends from home. Although I have support from home in terms of finances, encouragement, and prayers, I have been in essence by myself. You know, I love that verse where it talks about leaving your mother and father's house and cleaving to your spouse and becoming one flesh. It applies... somewhat to what I am doing. I see it as me leaving my mum's household for a short time to cleave to God and Him alone and to come back as wholly His. I am making intentional steps to become healthier and making myself accountable as well as vulnerable, to people I respect and can call fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters but also to be fully bare before Him. It is... new, and beautiful, and difficult, but worth it all.
   I say all of these intense things but also God is teaching me to have fun. I am in America! Who gets to say that they get to live and study and experience being in America for nine months, California of all places! I have made wonderful, ridiculously perfect friends that I'll no doubt burn with but also people with great humour. It's brilliant... It's so God. I am so blessed that I get to live out a dream that I have been dreaming for over a year... and I have at least six more months to live out! What a Father we have.
   Seriously.

beginning

   Entering into a new season has usually been a bit strange for me. I start to become aware that something is changing within me - the way I perceive things is different, I start to notice things I hadn't notice before, and even the way I feel is different and then I know that there is a shift in the way I walk with God. The process is awkward in the way that what may have been permissible in the previous season may not apply to the one you're coming into and suddenly doors that you never knew existed start opening and you're introduced to a brand new depth of who you are, who God is, and what looking at the face of Love looks like. 

   Months before I came to Redding, before the financial provision was there, before I even applied and it became a reality that I was coming to Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry; I asked God to prepare my heart. For God to prepare my heart with finances, visa, flights, living in a new country by myself, the list goes on... but I really asked God to prepare my heart with leaving my family and friends, the people I have come to know as family, my church and my home, behind for nine months. I want to be able to receive as much as I can in this culture and I realised I wouldn't be able to do that if I left half of myself back home. Having one foot left in England and another in California would be a bit of a stretch, and I would not be as invested as I could be into what I've come here to do. There were clear moments when I had to give it to God and admit that this whole process is wild and scary, and fully trust that He knew exactly what He is doing and that He was already preparing my heart with everything.
   I remember the two weeks before I flew out I was in a state of dreamlike limbo. I said repeatedly that nothing feels real, that it was all surreal. I knew that God had already been working in me but it felt like I couldn't work out where I was, like parts of me had already started flying west. All the while this overwhelming peace surrounded me and I knew that it was going to be a smooth transition. Before leaving, my church blessed me with prophetic words, encouragement and demonstrated such love (some of it in the form of a throw with circles of sewn on words and pictures that still keeps me warm at night), and I truly knew that I was not just going but I was being sent. It is something else to go, but truly another to be supported by your family to follow what God has called you to do, to be sent. 

   The goodbyes were both hard, and easy. Saying goodbye is always difficult but knowing that one breath divides a see you soon makes it worthwhile. Passing through customs and actually seeing Sharon and Mark wave goodbye through watering eyes was definitely one of those moments. As I sat back on the plane that would take me to my new season, and felt the rubber of the tyres lift off the runway I knew in my spirit that the same had happened with my feet in England. This was my new season.

   Landing in Redding at half eleven at night, after sixteen hours of flights and stopovers with some interesting conditions was surprisingly... smooth. The way I landed in San Francisco earlier that day with the sun setting just above the Golden Gate Bridge in a pink sky was God's promise of this smooth transition. Seeing the lights of what would be my home for nine months below me was incredible, I felt His presence comfort me even in this small aircraft that was shaking through the sky. He was, and is, with me. I'll spare you the details of almost forgetting my boarding pass, getting lost in an airport with no one to contact, and dealing with luggage awkwardly because His hand was over me. Within two days of being here, my feet landed and I knew I was 'home'. My transition was truly smooth, just as He promised and my heart was ready for how He was (and is!) changing my life.

  My immediate transition to arriving in Redding included being dropped off to the inn I was staying at for two days by a kind, kind friend that I had never even met before; going out to a lake that is stunningly beautiful and scenic (through some interesting directions) with Facebook friends that would ultimately become my revival group friends that I now know and love (I think there are now seventeen revival groups and at least 1,200 students so this was crazy); moving in to what would become my house for nine months and meeting my incredible roommates; buying a new phone and getting an American number; accidentally crashing a birthday party where I would meet people that I have since connected with; meeting my more-than-words-can-describe revival group, our interns, and Shane (who is my revival group pastor); and going to a meeting at Bethel.

   After all these months of actively waiting, praying, and doing the things that needed to be done in order to be able to come to actually being at Bethel... blew my mind. It also blew my mind when Bill Johnson patted me on the shoulder and I said to myself if that really just happen. It truly became a reality as I sat on a Friday night service at the sanctuary. I was finally here and fully expectant of what He would and could do.

   I've now been here for two months, in an environment and culture that puts the presence above all else and it makes me truly thankful for home. Incredibly so, for the leaders, for the church, especially mum, and Grandma and Grandad, for investing into me and helping to build a foundation in me that is founded on the Cross and the person of Jesus. The sacrifices they have made to share what God has given them, to truly follow His Spirit and His leading continually blows my mind and how He is truly, truly working back home is such a blessing to hear. Because of the foundation that I have I am able to learn from what is being shared, to be discerning and wise, and to be willing to grow.

   Summarising two months will be ridiculously difficult especially as I can't go one day without God making Himself known to me and bringing something radical that I have to process, but I will try to in the following post.

   I thought I would finish by saying why I've chosen "a journey of sonship" as my blog title and why I've chosen "passion, vision, son" as my url. Ever since I gave my heart to God, I was aware that God was a father but I never fully understood it until I had an encounter with His tremendous father heart and from then on, I have asked God to fully reveal Himself as my personal Heavenly and Perfect Father. Although I have experienced that as truth before I came to Bethel, I have really begun to encounter Him since and begun to really start to know that I am truly a son. A son of the Most High. Many things are coming up from my past, and deep things that I have hidden and pressed down are rising to the surface because He wants me to completely know that I am His son and nothing can hinder His great love. I know I am called to be a father myself, and the best fathers are the ones that know that they are a son. From starting to know my identity as a son has started a flowing of the vision God has for my life, the one that He thought of when He first made me, the very purpose that He called me to. From starting to know my identity as a son, burns the passion to be in pursuit of His presence, more of Him, for revival, for others to know that they are sons and daughters in this (seemingly) fatherless world. I am on this journey, and it is something that will go beyond Bethel, beyond my return home, a journey of truly discovering what it means to be a son.