Learning to BE LOVED - Finding Your Way from Distressed to Rest by Janis Pocock Gilbertson

A new book of two-way journaling has just been released and is available from this website. In it, Janis shares her experience of healing as she encounters the voice of the Wonderful Counselor. I believe others will also be inspired and healed as they read. Below Janis gives you an introduction to her book, and some of the journaling found within it.

Janis is an author, wife, mom and grandmother. By the Grace of God she is a passionate writer and insightful intercessor, walking thankfully with Jesus for over 40 years. An ardent lover of the Word and Spirit of God, Janis keeps her ear attuned to heaven, watching and listening for the voice of her Friend everywhere she goes. Janis loves the ministry of small intimate group gatherings, inviting others to experience the healing Rest found in the Father Heart of God. She lives with her husband Grant in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 

The power of God's words to transform us

“Your words were found and I ate them, and Your words were to me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart...” Jeremiah 15:16 AMPC

In March of 1980, during a fearful and low time in my life, I met the real Word, the true Word, THE LIVING WORD - the One Who knew and loved me from before the beginning though I didn’t know Him and have been slow to love back - the One Who spoke all of creation into being (that’s how powerful words are!). He was the One Who birthed into human form and “moved into the neighborhood” as the Message translation of the Bible says in John chapter 1; the One Who - when we read Him, the Amplified Classic Bible continues in Hebrews 4:12 - illuminates, examines, gets down to the nitty-gritty within and tenderly convicts, heals, divides between our breath of life soul and our immortal spirit. I met Him Who is more finely sharpened than a two-edged sword, energizing, examining, sifting, penetrating. He Who is alive and full of power!

The varied stories of peoples’ lives have long been some of my favorite reading. Beginning in the spring of 2013 I began to be taken into and through some of MY OWN unremembered story which was long awaiting the Light. The Word once made flesh, died and risen, took my hand and led me into new territory. Over the course of the next five years He spoke and revealed, drew into and through many Life-giving, Spirit-Breathed Words. He lived in and showed the beauty, the gift, the promise in each one, restoring lost identity, releasing lost voice. Beginning at an International Leaders School of Ministry, I was introduced to the beauty of the Father’s love that had been releasing around the world for many years. My already fervent relationship with God became transformed through Dr. Mark Virkler’s teaching on learning to Hear God’s Voice.

To this day I hear Father’s answer (replete with inner pictures) to my questions that day in May 2013: “What game do You want to play with me?” HOPSCOTCH. “ Why?” BECAUSE I LOVE TO HEAR YOU GIGGLE! & great giggling and laughter ensued between us, my heart swelling, overcome, with this revelatory experience of His Love. I am pretty sure I saw His huge smile even then. I certainly sensed it. Though I had journaled my questions and answering responses with God for many years, this Hearing God’s Voice teaching took me far beyond where I had been. Two-way journaling in this newly deepened relationship of being held in my Father’s heart dramatically furthered my experience of living loved with my Father, Saviour, and Comforter, listening and receiving as never before.

There are Words of Rest and Revelation, Identity and Calling, Healing and Celebration

 In 2018, having received a number of encouragements by several people and a clear direction from Holy Spirit to “Lay your vision to heart”, I began to write what had been given to me through the previous 4-5 years.

Learning to BE LOVED - Finding Your Way from Distressed to Rest was recently published and relates Holy Spirit’s Word Journey to healing that I was taken through with Jesus, held in my dear Father’s heart. Though I share MY story, Learning to BE LOVED invites each Reader to go on the journey with me, to stop and listen in Selah moments – opportunities to pause and consider at each signpost Word for what our Father wants each individually to hear in THEIR story…

A sample of journaling about entering a lifestyle of sabbath rest

Abba’s first very clear Word to me followed a prophetically gifted word/picture a few weeks earlier – that of Resting as a Pea in the Pod of Jesus. This day of clear direction and promise, I heard in my heart's ears and saw with my heart eyes, the giant capitalized word: SABBATICAL. And I broke down in tears, crying, “Yes! O Yes! Please!”

“Come up here. Come away with Me My fair one, My beloved. Come and sit with Me.  Come and rest with Me, lean back into Me. Let yourself be carried - as a pea in a pod in the stream of Life - My very Living Waters, the place you are designed to be. 

I will rest you, restore you, I will bring you to Life, alive and seeing from My wider viewpoint.  You shall know My peace.  You have been hearing the call to cease striving, to be still, to rest… Finally you are hearing - Sabbatical rest - leaving off all.  In this you hear it: Freedom!

And I will heal, quiet, and cleanse every area of fear, disability, and brokenness. 

I will make all your enemies a footstool under your feet,

and you will rise in strength, whole, with a new calling and clear seeing. 

And you will carry My heart and walk in My authority and,

in My Name, you will break chains of oppression that bind lives.

But for now, a season of sitting, of SABBATICAL –

"an extended period of leave from one's customary work,

especially for rest, and to acquire new skills or training."

You will 'acquire new skills and training' as a natural outflow of resting in Me.

Your call is not to a Sabbatical year, but to a Sabbatical Life.

You are invited to My rest, My ceasing of labour, of work and striving, to My “It is good!”

You are called to Rest beloved! Always!

Be Loved. Live Loved!”