It’s our fourth and final week of the March Guest Post Series here at Five Minute Friday! I hope you’ve enjoyed this little break from hearing from me all the time and that you’ve enjoyed the different voices that have been featured.

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Our featured guest post this week comes from Dawn Fanshawe, who chose our prompt for the week as well:

This week’s FMF writing prompt is: VACANT

Please enjoy the following guest post from FMF Community Member Dawn Fanshawe:

The word vacant gives me a sense of not just empty, but of unoccupied and awaiting the rightful occupier. It might be a vacant parking space, a vacant room, a space not yet filled with that which belongs in it.

That vacant space might be the un-evangelised parts of my own believing heart!

The parable came to mind, when Jesus tells of the man who has been delivered from a demon, but who leaves that space vacant, only to be filled later by other demons, rather than by Holy Spirit. 

Matthew 12:43–45

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

Last week I was fortunate to have a retreat in which I was able to receive some heart-healing prayer ministry. 

The Lord dealt with several things in my heart that were occupying a space that they had no right to – they were lies, vows, judgments and bitter expectations. They were never put there by God, but invited there unawares by myself, as in my woundings, I came into agreement with the enemy of my soul. 

God helped me to renounce and destroy these bitter roots in my heart, but they had to be replaced with truth and new Godly structures! This takes time and alertness…

For several days afterwards I felt a little wobbly, a bit out of balance – like I needed to learn how to function after heart surgery, how to live in the renewing of the mind and heart. 

I was so used to the old patterns and space, and the new, though made for me, still felt strange.

After the old, bitter patterns and structures were dismantled and removed, there was the vacant space, ‘unoccupied, swept clean and put in order’, which was crying out to be filled by the rightful occupier, by the Holy Spirit and by the sound mind that He ushers in.

Jesus transforms us by this renewing of the mind, little by little, as it would be too much for us to do it all at once.

And then this morning, I was reading Deuteronomy 7:22, where Moses paints this picture, which helps me to understand why a vacant space can be dangerous for my heart, using a different analogy which also gives me continued hope.  

Deuteronomy 7:22-26

The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the LORD your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. 

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Dawn Fanshawe is a mother, grandmother, and disciple of Jesus.

Dawn is the author of Lost Down Memory Lane, a memoir about caring for dementia.

Dawn writes to think, to process, and to connect with God and His children.

Find Dawn at her website, http://dawn.fanshawe.org

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Join us with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, VACANT, below, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment below: