Carrie was praying last week and was given a picture and some prophetic words:

I was praying, asking God what he’s doing, and I saw a picture of the world map. There was a dove flying over it and it was like the dove that Noah released after the flood subsided.  It had a thread following it, and as it flew over the nations it was like beads were threaded onto a necklace, each with the flag of the country it flew over on it. The thread as it wove around also spelt out the word ‘hope’.

The scripture that came to mind with it was Isaiah 61 v 1-3:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;
³ to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified

I also heard, ‘Don’t fear the bad report’, with Ps 112 v 7:

He is not afraid of bad news;
    his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.

I felt what God was saying was: There is an end in sight, God is working – the picture of the flags and the dove – he is bringing unity, hope and peace. I saw a tapestry with tangled threads on back and the perfect picture on the front. The enemy keeps trying to flip the picture so you can’t see what’s Gods doing with all the negative reporting and news.

I felt that if whatever grouping we’re in (on our own, couples, families), if we spend time focusing on God’s perspective (i.e. turn off the news for a while) and tune in to him, talk about him, he’ll flip the picture for us back to the perfect side and the fear will leave.

My sense was that we’re doing this already but sometimes we forget to actually turn the media off completely for a bit (i.e. we’re off TV but chatting online to friends etc..) and that can lead to feeling fearful and he doesn’t want us to feel that way…because he’s got us!

What a great encouragement and beautiful picture of the tapestry – we need to be intentional about which side we focus on!