The Mothers
It was also in January 2010 that the Lord revealed to us another piece of the puzzle of His purposes in our province – through Women’s Aglow.
Danyele Bloom, national president of Aglow in Canada, came to do meetings in Edmonton and stayed at the home of Stephanie Muzyka (Danyele and Stephanie knew each other very causally through Watchmen). Stephanie had spoken at an Aglow provincial meeting and Edmonton meeting in the prior few months. After the Edmonton meeting in October 2009 the Lord spoke to her that Aglow would play a key role in the journey in Alberta. Stephanie tested this word with the forum and everyone felt a witness from the Lord but none of us knew how or when this would happen.
During their time together, Danyele shared with Stephanie about Aglow’s mandate and history, including the fact that the first official chapter of Aglow in Canada was birthed in Edmonton in early 1970s. Aglow was a vibrant organization which drew together women who were stirred by the rising charismatic movement and wanted to learn how to hear God and submit their lives to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
One morning, Danyele invited Stephanie to accompany her to a Bible study in Sherwood Park during which Danyele shared the recent history of difficulties in Aglow that had almost caused it to be shut down a few years before. As Stephanie listened a question rose in her mind “Just what is it that the enemy fears so much about these women that he will go to this extent to try to wipe them out?” Almost immediately the Lord answered.
“They think they made a mistake,” He began, “Where once there were hundreds of women coming to the meetings now there are only a few. And those that remain feel like they are 'a bunch of old women in a dying ministry.' ”
“But what if,” the Lord continued “it wasn’t a mistake? What if it was My plan? I knew the day would come for the restoration of the revelation of the Kingdom that I taught the Early Church . And what if I placed this mandate on a younger generation knowing it would take an army of seasoned midwives to walk alongside them to bring to birth what is in my heart. What if, for the last 40 years (40 being the number of testing) I have been preparing this army in Aglow?
With this the vision stopped and at that moment, Danyele turned to Stephanie and asked if she had anything to share. Tentatively she submitted what the Lord had just spoken to her. Immediately Danyele responded. “”While you were talking, the Lord was reminding me of a prophetic word shared by Peggy Kennedy during our national meeting here in Edmonton in 2000.” In part, that word said:
“I saw something like a surface smaller than a 3 x 8 table with a drape placed over top of it. And God began to speak, some will look and say: 'Just what I thought, that’s the corpse of Aglow. At least someone was decent enough to pull the drape over the body.' God wouldn't talk like that but it's out in the land. And everyone is so afraid to lift the drape for fear there is a dead corpse underneath.
There is a crisis on the Local level. They pray, bake muffins, set up but the chairs are empty. Brokenhearted, they can't find advisors and no one wants to serve on the Board.
And I could see the tears of Area Boards and the National Boards. Afraid to lift the drape, underneath it propably is a corpse. But the younger generation will walk up to that draped surface and pull the drape away and you'll discover under the drape is no corpse. It is an Architect's model of that which is being developed and about to come forth.
It's an Architect's model, all built to scale and it will fit anywhere in Canada - city, rural Canada , the Muslims, natives, ethnic groups, north, south, central, the Atlantic provinces, Nunavut, the Island.”
“As you were sharing,” Danyele continued, “I felt a wave of reproach and shame roll off the women.”
In the weeks that would follow this meeting, Danyele shared this experience with her national board and Stephanie with the Alberta team. There was a unanimous witness from all of a connection between the spiritual mothers of intercession in Aglow and God’s purposes for the province of Alberta. Prophetically God has spoken that Alberta carries a mandate to pioneer and transform, birthing new models and ways of functioning, especially in how the generations walk together. Interestingly of the 30 people who God called into the fast in 2009, exactly 15 were Gen X an 15 were boomers. Although we don’t understand it fully, we are committed to continue to walk together, seeking the Lord until He reveals more of His strategies.
