Emma Reilly – Poland

A number of years ago, I read this passage in Amos 9 v 13-15 in the Message Translation:

“Yes indeed, it won’t be long now.” God’s decree. “Things are going to happen so fast, your head will swim, one thing on the heels of another. You won’t be able to keep up. Everything will be happening at once – and everywhere you look, blessings! Blessings like wine pouring off the mountains and hills. I’ll make everything right again for my people Israel: They’ll rebuild their ruined cities….And I’ll plant them on their own land. They’ll never again be uprooted from the land I’ve given them.” God, your God, says so.’

We had lived in Poland for a number of years at that point, and never seen the fruit that we prayed for. Our personal journey had also felt more like an uphill struggle than wine pouring off the mountains! We had constantly moved from one rented property to another, and were increasingly tired of not being able to put roots down. So God sowed fresh hope in my heart through these words, that He had blessings ahead, and that a moment would come when sudden change would happen.

A year ago, we began to see the fulfilment of these words. We had been saving money in order to buy a flat in the city, and by March 2021, we had saved enough money for a deposit for a small place. But due to Brexit, we found ourselves unable to buy a flat in Gdańsk without first obtaining a special permit through a very complicated and uncertain process. We did not have peace to continue, and started to ask God what He was doing. Life was busy, and we were juggling leading Lighthouse with leading the local church here, homeschooling our kids and Kevin teaching in school, and now we couldn’t fix our housing problem either! During our March online LHC meeting, God clearly spoke to us prophetically through Adrian Horner and Angela Kemm about enlargement, stretching out the cords of our tent (Isaiah 54), and about now being the time to gird up our cloak and run (I Kings 18 v 46). The same weekend, a friend gave me a prophetic picture from Mark 6 v 8-9, about having everything we needed for this next season, and that God was going to give us stories of changed lives as we went forward. We increasingly felt God was asking us to trust Him for enough provision to give ourselves full time to sowing the Gospel locally and the work of the Lighthouse Community, while trusting Him to sort the housing problem.

And then it happened, like wine pouring off the mountains!

Some friends contacted us and wanted to invest in some property locally. Together we’ve been able to buy and renovate a wonderful flat in the city that we can live in, rent free.

We then had the possibility to seriously consider Kevin leaving his job at school, which he did in September 2021. A faith journey for sure! And since that time, we have seen God moving wonderfully and deeply in the lives of our friends in Gdańsk. God is doing a new thing! One of our dear friends recently gave her life to the Lord, and there are others looking in, wanting to know about Jesus. Where the ground has felt barren before, we are starting to see the gospel bearing fruit in this place! One beautiful thing on the heels of another!

If you would like to join us on this faith journey, please prayerfully consider giving to the Lighthouse Community regularly to help us to sow the Gospel in Gdańsk, and across the nations of Eastern and Central Europe.