Fighter Pilot To Freedom Fighter.....

This week's blog is written by Gary a student on AST this year:

Fear and insecurity were things I used to exclusively attribute to other people. After all, my years as a fighter pilot and test pilot would certainly have thrown up fear, but I can honestly say that in those roles, I didn’t experience much. Having subsequently spent a number of years running businesses, I decided to leave my job, have no plan and see where God wanted to take me, despite the reality that I was neither communicating with, felt close to, or truly believed I could be loved by this distant God. Quite why I thought this was a good idea can only be explained with hindsight – God was on my case!

Less than a month after leaving my job in Apr 2016, I found myself on the exercise bike the night before the Father’s Heart Conference, typing on my phone a potted history of life as far back as I could remember……and it threw up a few shocks! I left home shortly after my 18th birthday to join the RAF – an emotional infant with strong empathy for others, but little connection or understanding of myself. Together with lifelong sin patterns, this characterised my life for the next 30 years. If you met me…you would never know. I was impenetrably self-sufficient, confident and had extremely high levels of mental resilience - both essential in a world where you set your own rules, decide your own boundaries and in effect, act like your own God.

And so it was that I went to the Father’s Heart Conference in April 2016.

A key theme was ‘self-parenting’ and it didn’t take long for the preparation of the night before to bring this to life for me at a very deep, personal level. Emotionally, I subsequently felt like lots of pots of paint had been spilled on the floor, were now all mixed together and I had no way of getting them back in the tins – that was the start of a rapid growth in understanding and connecting with my emotions.

There’s an entire book’s worth between the 1st and 2nd Father’s Heart Conference! Fast forward to the 2nd Conference in June 17 during which I repented of taking offence at God for the death of my beautiful Mum, broke agreement with the top 5 lies about myself (one of which was that people don’t like me, I don’t like myself, therefore how can God like me). The freedom from those lies alone enabled me to see that I had been so focussed on what I had been saved from, that I had given no attention or focus to what I had been saved into.

I started the Godfirst Academy for Supernatural Transformation in Sep 2017 and entered the next period of rapidly accelerating revelation. Knowing my identity in God – and truly believing who God says I am, has been an absolute life changer. Moving from head knowledge to a heart belief is the work of the Holy Spirit, but the wonderful people who have created incredible opportunities for me over the last 2 years have truly been amazing brothers and sisters.

As I look forward, I’m excited to be continuing with the Academy and am confident that God will reveal so much more in my now open and softened heart. History was yesterday, destiny is tomorrow – “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…….”