Hello Friends and Family:

God is so good! This month we have both experienced a new freedom in being able to operate in our arts ministry in the world, not just in the Church. Yay! My month at the Florence Academy of Art was a real breakthrough for me in discovering Italian iconography from 1200-1450 and developing a method of drawing and painting portraits which is very beautiful, classic and powerful. I hope to have examples of what I can do now in future Blogs.

Also got very close to Michael Angelo, visiting his sculptures and reading his biographies.  He was God’s man for sure, showing a devotion and commitment to God that is rare.  His last work of art was a pieta which shows a large hooded figure holding the limp body of Christ, next to Mary.  That figure was Nicodemus, who took Christ down from the cross, and Michaelangelo identified himself with Nicodemus.  This was his last monument to his abiding maturity in his love for God.

My charcoal drawing of Michaelangelo from a plaster cast of him.

I have two opportunities to sell my work one this month and one next.  This month I will be volunteering at the Veritasse art booth at the New Wine Conference and presenting some of my icons for sale.

Next month I will have a store front in Bristol to exhibit and sell my paintings to raise money for our ministry here. Keep me in your prayers, please!

Michael has been active as usual while I was away!

Here’s his post:

Bristol is a key to this Nation turning back to God.

I believe that Bristol has been assigned by God as a gate to a revival in this nation, England. That is a word Christine and I received, and left our family, home and careers to come here to Bristol. Many others have as well, most recently Roy and Melanie Fields who have been at Carmel Centre for the last 5 weeks pushing into heaven and bringing people with them.

We were in a Spiritual Mapping prayer meeting praying over the map of Bristol some seven weeks ago and God spoke through Sheena Tranter, to ‘Watch Carmel, I will do a work there, watch Carmel.’

Unfortunately there is not a hunger for revival in this city. Yet. The meetings were not well attended. There is a complacency which is all rapt up in the spirit of stupor, spirit of unbelief, spirit of control, spirit of mockery and spirit of poverty but most significant is an overriding humanism even within the church. People are unable to break out of this blanket which is so familiar that many do not realize it exists. There is a powerful pride in the British stiff upper lip which is really a trap of the enemy. It stops movement in the spirit, the natural and maintains a tepid status quo just above bearable.

But Christ came to give us life and life in abundance, that’s why this country needs revival, it’s forgotten that Christ is a powerful living God who calls us to an abundant life.

So when a couple of evangelists come to a city to do a work of God there is an intellectual rejection and passive resistance, the pastors of the city do not rise up and join together with it but for whatever reason stay silent. For those who have attended the meetings it has been a strong move forward.  But as God said watch Carmel, it shows me that Bristol is not yet hungry for a work of God. It is warm under its blanket and happy to stay there.

We know that God is concerned with land as well as people. We know that where things good and bad have happened in the past that location takes on a spiritual force for good or bad to people in that place there after. This can be redeemed through prayer or left to continue to have an affect spiritually on the people in that place. The land gives out the spiritual forces that have been created and licensed to be here by the people of this nation, they have been accepted for generations and have a strong quiet hold.

There is a whole lot of redeeming that needs to take place in this city and this nation for it to have the fear of God on it again and people to recognize there is a desperate need for a turning back to God. There have been missionaries coming over here to Bristol from Africa, Korea, America, the Philipines since we moved here 15 months ago all calling out for Christians to awake. They recognize that God has more to do with this nation, another movement of the Holy Spirit that will spearhead a movement into Europe. The prophetic words are consistent from many different sources that there will be a move of God in this nation soon.

It will take God to cut through the blanket that lays over this nation. We need prayer houses, evangelists and a fire in the belly of latent Christians to beseech God and stand in the gap for the sins of this nation, past and present. We need the Christian community working together in a way which is real not just a lip service. The churches are like castles open to the heavens but closed to one another, with enthusiastic worship going up to heaven but very little lateral connection or working together. There are some who are working for this but it needs to be all the churches.

That being said there are signs of  change in Bristol. There are networking Christian movements underway, the different prayer groups are being identified and brought together under the Bristol Prayer Network. There is movement forward, more and more reports of healings are coming in and I have seen several myself in this last week. More people are praying for healing in and outside of church. But I yearn to see the fires of the Holy Spirit burn brighter and then come together as one. That will happen but I do not know how long it will take for that hunger for God to be ignited and the blanket torn off England. Sometimes it seems so far off yet our God works in mysterious ways, often suddenly. We are blessed.

Love to you guys! We are praying for you, too!

Christine and Michael