What If They Remembered?

Today’s guest blogger is my friend Emily Oakley

A few weeks ago I was pondering things with the Father. I was watching my youngest play, remembering how each one of my five children had a wonderful imagination where everything was alive. It didn’t matter what they played with… it always had life. A leaf could be a bird, or a stone could be alive and have a name, a need to be fed, loved, and a comfy shoebox home. And as I pondered, the Father reminded me that in heaven everything oozes with life. It’s as though the very breath of the Father shines and flows out of everything. The plants have breath. Even the chairs echo with his radiance… and then I started thinking… What if the reason the children play like this is because they’re used to everything in heaven having life? What if it’s really still their normal, even if just for a little while?

And what if before they left the eternal realm in heaven (which is outside of time and he created each one of us before the foundations of the world and knew us by name) their destiny was spoken over them and they were each commissioned by the Father? And what if this was watched by the great cloud of witnesses who continually encourage us and pray for us? What if they each knew the reason we were called for this time, and the season we were stepping into, and how important it was for us to be on the earth for this exact moment in time?

And what if, as each child received their destiny, they also received their guardian angel who knew the promises, the gifts, the talents, the very keys that this child carried for their generation, to unlock doors that no man could shut and that they were placed within each child to enable them to achieve their potential?

What if the angel was awaiting the child to grow? To grow in the strength and love of the Father, and to help the child step into their destiny, to watch them grow into adulthood, helping them even if they were completely unaware they were there?

What if babies are more spiritually mature than adults? What if they’re more connected to the realm in which the Father resides than we are? And that if we actually nurtured them from the eternal realm into the natural realm, whilst giving them opportunities to dwell in the Fathers presence by giving them anointed worship music to soak under, setting them up in situations where they can more easily continue to receive from the Father?

They might just continue to remember him.

And what if they continued to remember?

What if they could still connect to the Father as they were nurtured in the natural realm and they continued to remember?

And if they continued to remember, we have one incredible, mighty army of powerful, sold-out children on our hands. A generation of children that would walk into adulthood who never lost their connection with the Father in the first place. A generation that would run with him their entire lives.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that they won’t need discipline or to be taught anything. Their humanity needs it. But their spirit man will already be growing into who they are in him—only a little earlier than in previous generations.

Many have prophesied about a coming generation the likes of which the world has never seen.

What if we just needed to catch the wind of this fact… that they already know him?

What if we just need to encourage them to continue enjoying his presence… only from here?

And what if they can already see into the spiritual realm?

And what if what’s normal for them isn’t normal for us?

So we shut them down without realising what we’re doing. Thinking that it’s only their imaginations, when some of the experiences they’re having are real.

When my son Archie was very little, probably about one and a half, he was settling to sleep when he suddenly stood up on his little bed pointing to the centre of the room signing with his little hands and saying “swishy thing,” which meant that he saw something bright and sparkly and full of light. At the time I could only close my eyes to see what was in the room, and right in the centre there was a huge angel. He wasn’t afraid. Just incredibly excited. He watched it for a little while, before it left the room and flew away… at which point Archie crawled to the end of the bed, pulled back the curtain and then watched it fly away, before crawling back to his pillow and settling back to sleep. I must admit, I was disappointed not to be able to see it with my eyes open.

When his younger brother was born, it was obvious that he could see too. Fortunately, I would often catch glimpses of what he was seeing. On one occasion, I was in the bathroom and I saw a beautiful, long piece of fabric that cascaded down. As I was looking at it, thinking it was very much like the fabric you often see that cascades from the wrist of some angels… and as I followed it down, I saw Max was looking at it too. As I watched him, he followed this length of fabric up and up…and when I turned to look again, I couldn’t see it anymore. I told him I had seen it too, and that I wished he could talk and tell me what else he had seen. He was only about 6 months old, able to sit up, too tiny to talk.

I have found that he regularly gets dusted by gold dust in colours of gold, red, and green, and sometimes blue. Even when he’s just been listening to a teaching that had been missed in the middle of ordinary, everyday life, whilst cooking dinner and the house is full.

And I know there are other parents that have noticed their little ones brushed with this too. What if we realised that each and every child, every baby was already given a destiny and purpose, that they were already loved and cherished—validated by the Father—whatever situation they were born into? And what if the same was true for their parents and their parents before that and that he cares for each and every generation… giving each one their own destinies to walk in for that particular place in time… to prepare the next generation for the next anointing they will walk in, because he is a creative God… always creating beautiful things straight from his heart as a gift for us?

My parents tell me that I could walk and run by the time I was 10 months old and that I would run away again and again, day after day. I would climb out of the windows downstairs and run up the little hill several times a day.

This is what I remember…

I remember running up the long hill not because I was running away from my parents, but I was running up the hill to wait on the corner. I would stand at the top of the road and wait… and wait… and wait… and look… and look. I remember that he had a white horse. I remember he loved me more than anyone else did or possibly could. And I was waiting for him…day after day after day…. week after week… hoping and waiting for him to come. It still makes me feel emotional when I let myself dwell on it. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t loved by my parents. I was very loved and wanted. I had lost five brothers and sisters although I didn’t know it at this point in time. My parents had waited for me for a long time. But I think I remember because I must have been able to do this for a long time. There are photos of my front garden and I must have been about two and a half years old and there was still no fence to keep me in. I have so many memories of living there… the sounds of wolves howling around the house… although it was probably just the wind. The view from my bedroom window… the trees in the distance and the wonder of what was beyond them.

We moved when I was about 3 years old and I remember suddenly feeling very hemmed in. For my parents, this was great because I could no longer escape and they had peace of mind. But for me, it had taken my freedom away. And slowly my life became full of other things. I never actually forgot… but I stopped thinking about why I waited for him.

And then I remembered this: a few years ago I was listening to a well-known pastor who was sharing a story about a lady from his congregation who had spoken to him about something her small child said. The mum had another baby, and she found her toddler peering over the side of the baby’s cot asking the baby to describe him saying, “because I’m starting to forget what he looks like.”