This morning I read on Facebook:

„There can't be a true intimacy if we are demanding the other to fill up our sense of need or lack or want. ... We all have this deep intuition of real intimacy, we all know on some level the potential of our relationship and yet over and over again we find that our relationships are spoiled by our projecting of our needs and fears onto the other person.” Rupert Spiral

To summarise briefly: Expecting the other person to fulfil our needs destroys intimacy. Suddenly it clicked in my brain. And I realised three things:

• Firstly, that this also relates to our relationship with God. Of course we can come to him with our needs and hardships. But that is not yet true intimacy.
• Secondly: Intimacy doesn't have to be cheesy. Many Christians I know speak of their intimate encounters with Jesus in words and images that seem cheesy or saccharine to me. And I suspect that this has blocked me a good deal in my own attempts to get close to Jesus.
• Intimacy means nothing more than sharing what you experience. And then resonating with each other. It doesn't always have to be „I love you!“, but also: „Wow, this wine tastes really good. Don't you agree!“ „Yes, I let it grow on sunny, rocky slopes. I'm glad you like it.“

I then went for a long walk and had the impulse to read the book „Prayer as an encounter“(A very helpful book for all those who long for a deeper encounter with God). One chapter is about going for a walk with God. Basically, the authors say: Walk slowly. Take in what you see. Notice God by your side.

Given my temperament, I can't really manage to walk very slowly yet, but I have drastically reduced my pace and let the landscape, individual plants and animals have a deep effect on me. Some things have become deeply engraved in my memory: Meadowfoam in the wind, a tree struck by lightning, the canal. I deeply enjoyed the fact that God was with me.

The desire to come closer to God - alongside the desire to grow in healing and the supernatural - is my greatest concern for my time here.

Things are also progressing in the supernatural realm. I'm still wishing the whole learning to heal thing would happen in a flash, but Sua had the impulse while praying for me yesterday that God would use my own challenges in that area to teach me things. Great! Still, I said to Jesus, „It's ok. I want to learn. Even if I would prefer the quick option!“

I went to a flea market late in the morning - before the long walk with Jesus - because I thought there might be people there to whom I could offer prayer...I want to grow and learn. As I left, I saw a man limping across the street. It was the half marathon here and he looked like he had a pulled muscle. I somehow missed going to him. I think you have to learn to be quick at this, to react to an impulse before your head starts shooting off... and then you're too blocked. It was a bit sad.

The flea market was also over, so I treated myself to a coffee in a pub and read Aliss„ book “Diary of Miracles". Sometimes I had to fight envy. What the woman experiences. And with what ease. Then I thought: I know that there are also people who envy me for what I'm experiencing. Most of the time you only see the results from the outside, not what a certain path has cost. And I decided again not to give envy any room, but to keep asking Jesus to go his way with me.

Then I struck up a conversation with an elderly woman with a walking stick who had fallen badly on her back yesterday. I prayed for her. For healing - and that she would find a copy of the same coat somewhere that she envied me so much. She didn't feel it, but said she would think of me when it got better. I said that she should thank Jesus in that case.

The man in plaster whom I spoke to told me that the plaster would be removed the next day and that he was no longer in pain. Praying for a healed person really doesn't make sense.

I had an impulse for the waitress. I simply „saw“ how Jesus sees her. I find that really easy. I just see that. The person has this or that gift and Jesus appreciates that about them. I find it really easy to communicate that. And I have always experienced that people were touched and moved by what they heard and expressed their thanks. Exception: A man an hour later who said „no thanks“ and ran off in the middle of a sentence...I shook the dust off my shoes and kept walking.

I asked a walker if she had walking problems - because it looked like she did - but she said no. As she walked on, I could clearly see that she was walking at an angle. It looked as if one leg was noticeably shorter than the other or that her hips were crooked. It certainly didn't look normal. But perhaps she didn't define this as a „walking problem“. Learning experience: In future, describe to people exactly what I noticed, e.g. „I saw that her gait seemed very unrhythmic or something like that.“

The best experience of the day for me. I saw a man with a large plastic splint around his leg. He had torn his ligaments during sport. As I prayed, I suddenly felt the Holy Spirit. People perceive God's spirit differently. In the Acts of the Apostles, they saw flames of fire, some people feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in the form of an emotional touch - they feel an inner warmth or begin to weep gently or a word of God burns in their heart, as with the disciples of Emmaus. Or they begin to laugh because the Holy Spirit lifts their burdens or refreshes them. Others - like some prophets of the Old Testament - become weak or begin to tremble. I rarely feel the Holy Spirit emotionally, but relatively often it is as if a power suddenly comes out of my lungs - occasionally accompanied by noises that sound like „ho“.

As I was praying for the man's knee, I suddenly let out a „Ho“. Not loudly, and I don't think he realised it because I was kneeling at his knee while he was standing. He denied my question as to whether he had felt anything. But for me it was a sign: Wow, something of the Holy Spirit has just flowed through me.

That really encouraged me. I believe that the Holy Spirit is there - regardless of whether we feel him or not. But it's nice to feel it. And since I have never felt this before when praying for the sick, but have always felt rather dry and powerless, I see the experience today as a harbinger of prayer, that I want to be a channel through which God's healing can flow...perhaps these were the first drops. May they become litres and streams.