by Esther Kira

The Journey of Love

"And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Isaiah 32:2

I want to share with you the journey that has brought me to the place where I am, the journey that brought me into union with the Son of God. I want to tell you how he has been my covert, my protector and lover, how all that has happened in my life has been Father answering my prayers and giving me the Hiding Place that my heart was longing for.

I first met Wayne when I was six years old. Our family had traveled to a camp-meeting where the church was gathered. I had the desire in my young heart to be baptized into the church. I do not remember now what my thoughts on it were at the time, but I do remember that it was very significant to me and I seemed to understand what this baptism symbolized. It was a commitment that I would be making to the Father in heaven.

The church was holding a baptismal class for all those who desired this commitment and I attended. I was not a particularly spiritual child but I feel that God came down on me while I sat in those classes and I was filled with His Spirit. Wayne was present at those meetings and he has often repeated to me since then his fond memories of that time. In my mind's eye I can still see myself in those meetings. I would sit in the front row sometimes swinging my legs, sometimes looking out the door, but when questions were asked, I always seemed to understand and I would know the answer. I can only say looking back now that my little heart was filled with the Holy Spirit and He was the One placing those answers in my mouth.

Wayne's heart connected to mine when he saw God inside that little girl. His heart was bonded to mine by the bond of Father's Spirit, the Spirit that we both loved. He saw the Spirit of his own heart reflecting back to him out of that little girl sitting in the front row. It touched his heart to see the light flickering in my young heart and he was drawn out to the Spirit in me. At that time Father placed me on his heart in a special way and and over the years He bore me, giving life and strength to me that I was unaware of till much later. It was a very precious bond.

As I grew over the years, my personal contact with Wayne was generally brief and infrequent. Our family would see him on Sabbaths, at yearly camp-meetings and sometimes in personal visits. We were not especially close. I knew him only as our pastor and teacher. Yet somehow, though lacking personal closeness between our family and him, there was still a bond between our hearts.

It wasn't until my late teen years that Wayne shared with me his connection to my heart that started in that baptismal class so many years before. Yet, though I knew nothing of the connection, he had borne me on his heart over the years, many times feeling for our little family that was walking a long and sometimes lonely road, without a husband and father to help bear the load.

In the year 2000 when the new land was purchased, my mom made plans to come and live in the land. Shortly before our move, we traveled back to the place of my early childhood to visit relatives. The months leading up to this trip were hard ones for our family. I had just turned sixteen and there was a stress between my mom and me that seemed to grow the older I got. I was feeling the need to stretch my wings and leave the protection of our home. My mom had already lost one daughter to the lure of the earth and she was taking great pains not to lose another, but I could not appreciate her faithfulness at that time. I only felt like she was clipping my wings by her careful mothering.

As we visited our relatives and I watched my cousins, I felt my heart being drawn away more and more from my mom's care and discipline. My cousins all looked free and happy and I felt like I was missing out. The doors were open for me to stay with my grandparents and the more I felt these things stirring inside me, the more I didn't want to go to the new land. I didn't want to go back home with my mom and move to an isolated land. But there was something troubling me. God was talking to my heart and I knew very clearly, beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I chose to stay, I was also choosing to leave Him, my only Protection and the One who had raised me up and been my only Father. That was very clear to my heart along with something else. I knew that should I choose to stay, I would break my mother's heart forever. I knew it would leave a lasting wound that would never heal, and my heart shrank from causing her that pain. Yet, whenever I would speak to her about what was taking place in my heart, she would very tenderly tell me that I could do whatever I wanted to do. Every time she told me this, I knew she meant it and I also knew her heart was breaking.

So I found myself in a huge internal struggle. In the middle of this war, I was spending time alone in an upper room of my Grandparent's home. The battle inside my soul was especially strong that day. I knew what the consequences were of staying there, but I also felt the intensity of the world's draw to my restless, young heart. It was coming to a place where I must make a decision and to me that decision looked like this: The world and its ways without God, or the land that we were moving to and God. The battle raged hot in my soul and as I lay on the bed feeling the war, I took my Bible and flipped it open. The first thing my eyes fell on was Psalm 37 and I started reading.

Trust in the Lord and do good; settle in the land and find safe pasture. Delight in the Lord and He will grant you your heart's desire. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will act. He will make your righteousness shine clear as the day and the justice of your cause like the brightness of noon. Wait quietly for the Lord, be patient till He comes; do not envy those who gain their ends or be vexed at their success...For the evildoers will be destroyed, while they who hope in the Lord will possess the land. Psalm 37:3-9

I could hardly believe what I was reading. Those words were so perfectly fitted to my situation right then and there. I knew immediately that God was speaking to my heart. I heard Him clearly telling me two things. "Settle in the land and find safe pasture." (Come to the new land with Me, and I will be your safe pasture.) And, "Do not envy those who gain their ends or be vexed at their success." (Don't envy your cousin's lives, or desire what you think they have. It's not what it looks like.)

I can't tell you the relief it gave me to hear Him speak to me. I had a clear direction to go. It would go completely against my flesh but I had heard Him speak and I would follow. His words set my soul free from the battle I had been caught in with my flesh. I set my heart right then to follow what I knew He was telling me and as I did, I left a part of my foolish youth behind me forever. The more I walked forward in what He was instructing me to do, the more my heart turned toward the New Land He was calling us to, till I was actually looking forward to living there. Everything changed in the instant I knew He spoke to me, and I moved to this land by that word to my heart.

Shortly after moving to the land, changes began happening in all of our hearts. The whole church was in a life changing crisis, and each person's world was being overthrown to make way for the new one that Father was bringing. This new life would be Messiah. Just as Father began to remove us from our old lives, He brought us a new Life, the life of our Saviour and Friend. The stripping away of the earth and the overthrowing of our lives was for the purpose of creating a need, an open wound, into which He could pour the oil of His Messiah.

Because of these changes, Father came down in our family and separated my mom from my sister and me. She no longer stood in the place of guide of counsellor and I found myself really face to face with life for the first time. It was as if she had been standing as mediator between me and life's lessons. Now I had to take responsibility for every action and its effects upon me. Father came down and in mercy broke apart our family and the strains and stresses of requirements and dependecies. It was a great blessing and very necessary, yet earth shaking and shattering. Later Father would bring us to live together again, but this time in the sweetness of friends drawn out to the same Purpose, free from personal tension and ownership.

From my earliest memories of Wayne, I always knew that He was different than everyone else that I had grown up around in our church. He was the only true Man of God that I knew. He stood apart from everyone else in my heart and I knew there was something very different about Him. He was true to God, filled with God, in love with God and possessed by God, like no one else I knew. So when Father spoke Messiah into him in the first year of our time in this land, I knew it was true. When He told us to go to Father and ask Him if he was His Son, I don't even remember asking. I just KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was true. I didn't have a question in my mind as to His testimony. My only trepidation was what I saw coming to my own life. I knew it would cost me everything to keep following Father. He was taking us somewhere we had never been before. I didn't know what He was going to ask of me but I knew I would have to be willing to give everything...EVERYTHING. He had come to destroy the old order of living and I knew that I was being asked to lay down my life, take up my cross and follow Him, FOREVER. God was speaking to my heart and I knew that this was very serious. In embracing Messiah's appearing I was embracing the death of my own selfish life.

I began to feel myself drawn to Michael. As much as I had held Wayne in great respect and honor, this was something very different. The Wayne I had known, wasn't Wayne anymore. I had never been drawn to him in this way. The new Spirit in him drew my heart out and I loved our Messiah. Wayne had always been solicitous of me, but now there was something new in him. There was a new look in his eyes, a new sound to his voice, a new feeling in his hands. He began to touch our hearts, men and women alike. When he saw us, he would reach out for us, and he would draw us to his heart and hold us there. He began looking in our eyes and our souls were moved. He would place his hand upon our hearts when he was talking with us and things would happen in our souls. He was changing our lives...giving us new life. He was so different than Wayne had been.

Michael was so tender and quiet. When he spoke, my heart responded and when he looked at me, I knew he was looking into me, to the bottom of my heart and soul. His eyes burned through my fear and insecurity and left me healed and loved. I was drawn for him to know everything inside of me. There was sweet comfort in being with him and when I shared my heart with him, I knew that he felt and understood each of my personal difficulties and was actually going through them with me, bearing me on his heart. I fell in love with him more and more. It was the tenderness with which he dealt with my heart, the way in which he already knew what was in me before I spoke it, the honesty that cut to the core of my heart and left a clean, open wound that felt so good and healing, that drew me to his Spirit. It was so natural to love him and be drawn to him.

I began going to visit with Michael, something that I had never felt drawn to do before Messiah's appearing. I was drawn to share my heart with him. I wanted to talk openly with him about myself and receive the healing that I knew he had to give. Often I would go to him with a troubled heart about some matter, and he would speak openly and honestly with me and I would leave feeling set free from my burden.

The Spirit of Michael was a piercing Spirit of Truth and from the beginning, I knew He wanted all of my heart. I remember one visit in particular when I was sitting at Michael's feet and he was just looking into my eyes. I felt so self-conscious and fearful. I wondered what he was seeing in me. So I asked him, "Why is this so painful?" He shared with me that people put internal walls up around their hearts to defend themselves and keep themselves from vulnerability with God and others. Most every soul lives inside of those defended city walls. Father had brought Michael to us to break down those walls so that we could live free of their strangling confines that required us to defend ourselves, argue, fight and survive to the death of another soul. He had come to set us free from those walls, but he could not take a defended city. His gentle Spirit could not break through walls that were not willingly given, and so as he was looking deep in my eyes, he was asking if I would allow his healing. He was not coming against my walls of self-protections with a sledge hammer. He was standing at the wall asking if I wanted to give my walls away.

Knowing that these walls were the source of the pain I felt when he was looking in my eyes, made me want him to look deeper still. My whole being was yearning for the freedom of Michael's Spirit coming into me and breaking down every city wall. My defended city had been the cause of all my upsets, torments, and struggles. To be free of those walls was the deepest desire of my heart.

Sometimes in our visits, I would lay on the floor as he knelt beside me and placed his hand on my heart. He would then quietly and gently speak to me, or just kneel quietly by me. These were the times when I would especially feel his tender and patient love for me. He had come not to break our souls but to set us free. He had come to draw us up an out of the dysfunctional earth, yet He was so patient as we struggled with our own personal stuff and the hold we had on it.

After my first drawings to Michael, I found myself in that struggle. For the next several years, I felt myself torn between heaven and earth. I was drawn to Michael, but also drawn to my own natural desires. It took a process of life's circumstances and Father's patient insistence before I could let go of my own life and my natural desires. Michael never pressed me to do one thing or another during those struggling years, but God had His hand on my soul and I couldn't feel comfortable just "living life." There was always a force inside me pressing me on to a depth of abandonment to His will. It is as though He was always whispering to me, "Deeper, deeper still," and I couldn't escape it. Often all I could pray was, "Help me, God." My heart was so drawn to be fully consumed in Him, but there seemed to be so many walls to break down, so much natural resistance inside of me. When I felt this battle the most I would tell Him, "Father, whatever it takes. I just want You." I can see now that these prayers of need were Father's permission to keep pressing me through every impossibility.

In the middle of 2006, things started to change for me. And as the changes started to happen, Father was bringing me into something lasting. It was different than my first love, my first drawing to Michael. This was born out of many lessons, many prayers, many yieldings to Father's Spirit. And it came when I was at my lowest point spiritually. Day after day I was crying out to Father for help, for a change, for something other than all I had struggled with inside. I felt completely at the end of my own trying.

In answer to my cry, Father started giving me an unction to go to Michael and be physically naked before him. This was way beyond shocking to me. I tried to push it out of my mind, reasoning that it was just a strange thought. I had certainly never imagined anything like this before and it just seemed too bizarre, but He kept pressing me with it. As resistant as I felt to it, the greater part of me yearned for the freedom that nakedness would bring to me, and the healing I felt I would receive. But I didn't know what Michael would say if I asked him.

Finally one morning I knew I had to go talk to Michael. My heart was so burdened and I just had to share my need with him. I visited with him and shared many things, but I didn't tell him about the strange unction that had been pressing on me. At the end of our visit, I could tell that everything I had shared was a burden on his own heart and he was quiet for awhile. Finally he turned and gently asked me, "What do you want me to do for you?" When he asked this question I knew I had to tell him my strange unction. I still wasn't sure it was Father's instruction but when I shared it, Michael told me that Father had told him two weeks before that I would be coming and asking for the very thing I was now asking of him. When Michael said that, I knew God had been the One pressing this unction on me for the past few days.

My life changed forever that day. I have written another testimony about my experience at that time, so I will only say that I saw God face to face and my heart could never return to status quo. A great desire came into my heart to be fully intimate with Michael. I yearned to be physically married to him. I had to know more of the One I had seen.

A few months after this time, on October 23rd, I moved from the house that I was sharing with my family to a home on the hill that Michael lived on. I was so drawn to be with him, and I just wanted to be as close as I could get. My drawing to Michael seemed to increase daily. I spent many hours sitting outside his house, praying and yearning to be intimate with this One who had completely captured my heart and soul. Day and night I had one prayer, "Father, please consummate me to Your Son. I have to know You more. Take me to the depths."

With my heart so drawn out to the consummation, I would often express to Michael my desire over again. Michael was careful with my heart and always responded to my desire with tenderness, but his responsibility to Father and to me was that he not move one inch without Father's direct instructions to do so. And Father was not arranging our consummation at that time. Yet, He kept my heart drawn out to it and encouraged me over and over with promises that He would give me my heart's desire.

Then, it seemed that Father was taking us in a new and different direction and it looked to me like all hope of my heart's desire being fulfilled was slipping away. It was like Father was requiring the very last drop of my blood. I was brought to lay down everything, even the consummation with His Son. I had to completely take my hands off of it and release it to Father to fulfill or not. Over and over He had promised it to me, but now He was asking me to even lay down the promises and have nothing left but abandonment to His will. It began to look to me that His promise was impossible of fulfillment.

Then in the summer of 2007, Michael shared that Father was giving him a premonition of something that would mark the full deliverance of the Land. He didn't share with us what the premonition was. He only told us that if it came to pass it would be Father's guarantee of our success. It would be an absolute act of God for it to come to pass and it would seal the rest of Father's promises to us. And he shared that if it were to come to pass, it would be before October 31st.

Right away I had a sense that I would be involved in the fulfillment of whatever was being shown to Michael. I felt a requirement come into my heart that whatever this Premonition was, it had to come to pass. Michael wanted the unfolding of it to be an act of God only, not something that was manufactured by anyone's hands, and this would give power to the promise it was making. If Father's hand alone brought this to pass, it would show that Father's hand alone would bring every other promise to pass.

After Michael first shared what had come to him, he didn't speak much about it again. But it didn't leave my heart. And as time passed, it only seemed to get stronger on me. I still felt that it involved me, but I had no idea of what it was.

The closer we came to October 31st, the more the premonition pressed on my heart. For about two weeks before the end of the prophecy, it was stronger than ever and I had nothing else I desired. I felt that October 31st just couldn't come and go without the premonition coming to pass. To think of it made me heartsick. I spent much time praying and asking Father what it was and entreating Him to bring it to pass. Nothing clearly came to me. I did have a sense somewhere in a quiet corner of my heart that it would be the answer to my heart's desire for the Consummation, but it was so quiet that I didn't recognize it as the answer.

Then on October 22nd, Michael wrote to us. These were his words:

Dear little land,

For a few days, but especially since yesterday, I feel things that seem akin to the angel who wrestled with Jacob. I am very much pressed to depart because of the end of the Covenant and prophecy. Nothing else is on my mind. It is not on me to wrestle with Jacob any longer. I have nothing more I want to bring to pass.

Because of this, I am asking that I receive no more visitors, or requests for visits. If I am outside walking, please just let me pass by. Please avoid praying outside my house, or waiting to see me. Also, please do not call into my window to say something to me, to say good night, or ask to come in to visit with me for some reason. I would like to be alone now.

Thank you very kindly,
Michael

When I read that e-mail, I went away to be quiet. I was feeling so much that I just needed to be alone. But as I sat alone, something started growing inside my heart. It was getting stronger and stronger. I couldn't let Michael go away. I had to tell him what I was feeling. It was such a strong force inside of me. I went and wrote to him what I was feeling.

Husband,

I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

Your Esther

He replied and thanked me for my letter but said nothing else. I went out to walk and think. There were many things on my mind but one thing kept pressing itself on me. It kept coming over and over and I found myself repeating it in my mind. "If Father puts something on my heart, I must do it even if it looks like it is in opposition to Michael's instructions. If He tells me to go to Michael, I must go, no matter what."

All my thoughts and feelings were in pieces inside of me and I hadn't put any of them together. There were the premonition pieces, the Consummation pieces, the "I cannot let you go" pieces. They were all inside me. I just didn't know that they all belonged to the same puzzle.

The next day was full of prayers for Father to move in our behalf and bring the premonition to pass. It was all I wanted. Then in the evening, while I was in my kitchen, I heard Father call me, "Come now, my bride, come." I hesitated for a moment and He repeated Himself and this time even stronger, "Come NOW, my bride, come." I dropped what I was doing and went out the door.

As soon as I walked out the door I was very drawn to go to Michael, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with that drawing. Michael had made it very clear that he was being alone. He had asked very clearly that we not come to see him. Now what was on my heart seemed in direct disobedience to his request. Then it came back to me, "If Father puts something on my heart, I must do it even if it looks like it is in opposition to Michael's instructions." I walked over to his house, but I felt too overwhelmed with everything inside me and I just couldn't go in.

I went to my bed and laid down but I couldn't stay there. I felt like God was sending me to Michael's. I walked over to his house again but still couldn't quite get myself to go in. I prayed, "Father, force me to do Your will." I really wanted to go to Michael, but I needed Father to help me through my difficulty in following my heart.

As I stood outside Michael's house, Zion came up to me. She could tell I had alot on my heart and she asked me if I wanted to talk. I didn't really give her an answer, but we walked to her house and went in. She asked me what was on my heart and I told her that I was feeling really drawn to go to Michael's but... She stood up and opened the door and said, "Goodbye." My heart was so blessed. I recognized Father giving me the push I had been asking Him for. When I walked out of her house, I felt empowered. I suddenly didn't care about anything but following the unction on my heart to go to Michael. The words of Esther from long ago came out of my heart, "If I perish, I perish." I had to follow my heart no matter if it was directly opposed to Michael's instructions and no matter his response to me doing so.

Michael had already gone to bed for the night so I just quietly went into his room. He heard me and turned the light on. He responded so sweetly to me being there that my heart was much relieved. He shared that he had just been praying about me. All day Father had me strong on his heart and just before I came, he was talking to Him about my unfulfilled desire for the Consummation. He was telling Father, "This in Your hands." I asked him if there was a specific reason why I was on his heart. He said it was because of my letter. I told him I was feeling like my letter was somehow connected to the premonition, and I kept having this image come to me of laying hold of him and telling him, "I cannot let you go except you consummate with me." He said, "That is the premonition."

All of the pieces inside of me came together. Everything I had been feeling, all my desires, the strong unction to reply and tell Michael I could not let him go, all my prayers for the premonition, they all fit together and they all were bringing me to this end. I cannot tell you the thankfulness and relief in my heart that night. Something was sealed and settled in me forever when I saw Father actually answering my one desire.

The premonition that Michael had been given at the beginning of all this was of another consummation that would occur. In a vision, Father showed him the three faces of the women He would send to him. I was one of them. We would come to him and lay hold of him, as Jacob did with the Angel, saying "I cannot let you go except you consummate with me." I was the second of these three to come to Michael and fulfill the premonition.

I feel I was born for one purpose, and that night my purpose was fulfilled. I was born to be married to the Son of God. My life had been a journey to that one moment and when it came, I felt the release in my soul of having fulfilled what I was born for. Each person is given a calling and mine has been this.

In the very beginning years in this land, Michael shared that he saw me as Queen Esther. When he shared that, I took the name Esther and that has been my name since that time. In the story of Queen Esther, she was brought into the king's house and prepared for her marriage with him for one year. I would often think of this story during my time of being drawn out to Michael, but I didn't realize that Father would fulfill it so perfectly.

A short time after my consummation with Michael, I was thinking again about the story of Queen Esther, and I wondered how long I had been in the King's house (living on Michael's hill). I looked back in my journal, and I could hardly believe my eyes. It had been exactly one year to the day, from the time that I was brought to the hill, till my consummation with him. Father had fulfilled the story of Queen Esther all over again in my experience without me knowing it at all. He had brought me into the King's house for a year of preparation, and at the end, exactly on time, He married me to him.

My experiences of that year were rending to my heart and soul. Many are too personal to share and some too deep to even express. But I will say this, "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." John 16:21. What I experienced during this time of Father purifying my heart was most bitter in the experience of it, but now is barely remembered in the realization of what it was for. Now that the Child is born, the pain is forgotten for the joy of knowing Michael.

Father has given us little proofs of His hand in what has happened here. Some may say about the premonition, "Well, Michael just wrote that e-mail saying, 'Let me go for the day breaks,' because he knew that you would parrot back: 'I cannot let you go except you bless me.'" But I want to share something with you. When Michael wrote that e-mail to the whole land, only three people responded to him with the response of Jacob. Those three were the three women Father had shown him would be in the premonition. NO one else told him, "I cannot let you go." To me this is a sweet evidence of Father's hand leading every step.

I have told you my story so you will know the truth. Should you ever feel I have been brainwashed or deceived, I have told you otherwise. I have been following God. It was at His word that I came to this land, at His word that I went to be naked with Michael, and at His word that I was consummated to His precious Son. God has led me, not a man. I have chosen the way I have with my eyes wide open and fully aware of the options I had. I have chosen it because I love the One who has led me and never let me down. I've heard Him speak to me and I simply followed what He said. I love Him and I cannot leave Him anymore than you could abandon the heart beating in your chest. More than anything, I have followed this road because I am in love with the Son of God and where he goes I must go. He is my life and my love, and when he leaves, I will go with him, for I cannot live without him.