So, I promised all my new friends in the land of Oz that I would blog about this crazy journey I've been on. Its 4:42 a.m. here at home. My body is yet to figure out what time zone it is in so instead of sleeping, I'm up writing.
There is now so much revelation and experience on this side of my trip to Australia, i figured it would be best to do several blogs to cover it all. In this one, I just want to tell the story of all the things I experienced leading up to the trip. This in itself will probably be a bit lengthy.
Grab some coffee and sit down awhile.

blessings,
stephen

Earlier this year, before I had a clue I would be visiting Australia, I began to see references to the Wizard of Oz everywhere I went. I remember driving down the highway, seeing a billboard that read, "There's No Place Like Home". It had that supernatural glow around it, like it was saying, "pay attention to me".
Then my wife, Sarah called and said our sister in law, Amanda randomly broke out into singing, "Somewhere over the rainbow." At the same time I passed another billboard, saying There's No Place Like Home.
Then in April, Songs of Water is pulling into the Shakori Hills Music Festival and we get behind a vehicle with a bumper sticker that reads, "There's No Place Like Home". So at this point, I know something is up, but I don't have a clue what.
After this, Sean Feucht contacts me and invites me to go on this trip to Australia with his team. I've never traveled with Sean before but I knew it was the Lord's invitation. He didn't know this, but I had been invited to Australia 2 times before over the past two years. I just wasn't able to go until this time. Sean had just felt the Lord put it on his heart to ask me to go. Also, he was visiting one of the places that had invited me to come before, Byron Bay.
So, of course, I said yes to the trip.
Moving on. Sarah and I have a date night and rent the movie, Australia. All through the movie are references to The Wizard of Oz, Somewhere Over the Rainbow and the like. I still didn't quite get it yet though. I didn't see the correlation between Australia and The Wizard of Oz. It was starting to gel for me though, I just didn't know what God was trying to say.

Finally, Sean sends the team an email that was headed, "We're going to the land of Oz, boys!"
Then I finally caught up to it all. I didn't realize that Oz was a slang term for Australia. When he said that, the light bulb went off in a major way. I began to pray through and consider how and why and what all this meant. As with any good story, there are multiple layers of meaning and application. I knew the Lord was speaking to me on a personal level but it grew into an understanding of this a prophetic word for the nation i was going to.

The serendipitous events didn't stop here though. On my birthday, (September 5th), my sister sends me an e card of a man sleeping at the end of a rainbow. These white doves come and pick him up and fly him over the rainbow while the song plays in the background, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She didn't know anything about Oz or any of the experiences I was having. (Later, I found out that a theatrical adaptation inspired by the story of Oz, came into theaters in Sydney on my birthday as well and was playing the whole time we were there.)

So after this, I'm walking into a Border's bookstore with my good friend, Luke Skaggs. I'm telling him about all this stuff and that I think it has to do with my trip to Australia. We walk in the store, and they have a Wizard of Oz display set up. So after picking my jaw up off the floor, I bought a copy of the book. I devoured this book in less than a week and got so amazingly inspired, it was amazing. I had never read it before. Not only did the Lord download heaps of revelation to me, but I also got re-inspired to finish the children's book I've been writing the past few years. But the revelation that came to me, was powerful. Really powerful. Stuff started to make a little more sense. I'll get to this in a later blog.

So, here's where it all begins to culminate for me. A week or so later, Luke and I are walking into Barnes and Nobles. They have an even larger display of The Wizard of Oz set up. Now, I'm going, okay. wow. I get it. I must be really slow of hearing or something! I asked one of the managers, why is The Wizard of Oz now cropping up everywhere. He said, it was in celebration of the 70th year anniversary of the movie. As soon as he said 70th year, I felt the Lord speak to my heart and say Israel was in captivity to Babylon for 70 years and then they were set free. I asked Luke to check it out on his iphone app. We found it in Daniel 9:2

So, I knew that this was unfolding as a word of liberty and freedom for Australia. God was planning to bring a new measure of freedom and liberty to them. I later found out that some parts of Australia were actually started as a prison colony.

A few days later, my friend, Jay who works for my window cleaning business came in and said, "Have you heard the news about Australia?" I said no, but I went to look up what I could find on the internet. News report upon news report all said, "A swath of eastern Australia labored Wednesday under the worst dust storm in 70 years." 70 years. Dust storm. Paper after paper all cited a 70 year mark for this dust storm. God was serious. It is a time of freedom and release from "Babylonian" captivity.

Now think about this for a second. Dorothy came to the land of Oz via cyclone, which is a whirling mass of wind, dust and debris. Wow! I could have never put this stuff together on my own. I also learned, interestingly enough, that the 70th year anniversary blue ray DVD of the Wizard of Oz was going to be released in America the very day we arrived in Australia. It had on it, an additional feature called "When the Lion Roars". (for us Christians, the Lion of Judah represents the ferociousness of God released through praise, which Judah means.)

So, continuing with this, we all know that when Dorothy landed in Oz, she landed on the wicked witch of the East and killed her. Keep that in mind. I knew that Daniel learned about their freedom from captivity coming after 70 years by reading Jeremiah's letters. So, I looked in the book of Jeremiah to see what Daniel may have read. You may not believe what I found, but at least you'll know there's no way I could have made this stuff up myself. Remember, I haven't even sought the Lord for revelation for Australia yet. He was so just excited for this nation, He began to pour this stuff out to me. Look at Jeremiah 30:23.
"Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goes forth with fury. a continuing whirlwind; it will fall violently on the head of the wicked."
You have got to be kidding me. I could hardly grasp what I had just read. It is still amazing to me even after I've spoken on this now several times. This verse is written in the section of Jeremiah's letters when he was talking about Israel's captivity coming to an end after 70 years.

Lastly, to end this section of the blogs, the night before we left for Australia, Sarah and I are chilling out, flipping through channels looking for a good movie and we stumbled onto the scene in the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy is leaving to go back home, kissing everyone goodbye. Pretty crazy.

When we got off the plane in Oz, we were picked up and taken to our hotel. When I stepped out of the van, the very first thing I see in the land of Australia is a huge billboard directly across the street from us that said, "The Wizard of Oz backpacking". I was literally undone! My profile picture here on facebook is of me standing in front of this sign.

So as you process through all of this stuff, I'm going to try and go get some sleep now. I'll write some more about the journey in a few days. This is literally only the tip of the ice burg.