Five More Minutes

By Geoff Woodcock

Five more Minutes: We are living in a time of rapid and intense change.The good news is that God is moving and as long as we keep in step with Him, we can face the future with a sense of vision, hope and optimism.

In this book, we look beyond the current flood of darkness to see how God is moving in power to bring about His design for His people. As we align with this design, we find the vision to stand firm and the power to take action. This is our time. Join us as we go on a journey with Jesus into a life of love, glory,and overwhelming victory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoff Woodcock
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781991159472

Geoff Woodcock

Hello Reader! My name is Geoff (pronounced "Jeff"), and I am the author of the One with Christ series of books, a speaker, and founder of the Freeslaves.org project. I live in Dunedin, New Zealand, with my glorious wife Melanie and we have been blessed with four exceptional children. I started following Jesus as a child, but it was not until my early twenties that I began to come out of legalism and into the grace of His awe-inspiring love. I now live to love Jesus. He has done more in my life than I could ever express, and I pray He will always be my reason, my passion, my vision, and my goal. Jesus says that Scripture depends on the commands to love God and love others. In the One with Christ series of books, we look at the Bible through this lens of love in dependence on the Holy Spirit. The goal of the books is not simply to inform or educate the reader, but to help the reader connect with and encounter God. We've had some awe-inspiring testimonies from readers who have had their lives changed as they've encountered Jesus while doing the devotional reflections in the books. I hope and pray it will be the same for you. May our God of love launch you into new depths of life as you grow in love, intimacy and unity with Jesus. All blessings in the love of Christ, Geoff

Book preview

Five More Minutes

Arise and shine. It’s time to get up. The world needs you.

We are living in a time of rapid and intense change. In a way, it feels like we are being dragged out of bed, sluggish and bleary-eyed, awakening to a world that is nothing like our fading dreams. Many of us are struggling to take it all in. What is going on?

Things are changing, but it is not in the way that most people think. The good news is that God is moving and as long as we keep in step with Him, we can face the future with confidence and optimism.

Learning to keep pace with God in this time may require us to get in better spiritual shape than we are now. I found this out in a practical way after the Lord prompted me to do regular exercise. I started training at a local gym and quickly realized that my mind needed more conditioning than my body. My mind was weak and would want to quit at the first sign of pain, which made the battle more mental than physical. I had to train my mind to trust in what my body could do, to ignore the pain, to refuse to quit, and to expect success.

One day a friend was praying for me and felt that I was going to experience an onslaught of the enemy, but that God would give me the victory as I worshipped Him on my knees. The next day I was at the gym. The treadmills there have video screens so people can run through different hiking tracks around the world. I chose a track in California and set a goal of sustaining my highest pace for 30 minutes. It was grueling. After just a few minutes, the pain hit as my lungs stretched out. It’ll pass, keep going. Shortly after, the trail on the video changed and I found myself running full speed along a track called ‘The Devil’s Punchbowl." I thought of the spiritual onslaught that my friend had just mentioned. Ignore it. Just keep going. But by the 25th minute, I was spent. My body felt like it was drowning—I was gasping for every breath. I watched the clock as time slowed down, but still I knew I just could not afford to quit. In those last five minutes I felt like I prayed a month’s worth of prayer, doing whatever I could to reach my goal. Beyond exhausted but thankfully alive, I finally arrived at the 30-minute mark. Immediately a thought came to my mind. It was so unusual and clear that I felt it had to be God. Five more minutes.

You have to be kidding. I’m dying and you want five more minutes? Yet at that moment, my breath was restored. A second wind kicked in and I cruised through the last few minutes. Against all expectation, it was easy. Then, with just 30 seconds left to go, the track on the video changed again. I left the Devil’s Punchbowl and came to Trinity Mountains.

It felt like the treadmill was preaching. If we just keep going, we’ll come to the end of our own strength and striving—the end of ourselves. But at that point, when we feel we have nothing left, if we can connect with the grace of God and keep going forward in His strength, we will come into new heights of relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit, and experience the glory of Trinity Mountains.

Discovering the Gold Within

James 1:1-4 (NASB [2])

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, [Greek: peirasmos], knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Endurance is the strength of the will to keep going, especially in the face of the strong temptation to give up. By its very nature, this is a quality of character that is only forged under pressure. It is important to keep this in focus as we head into the coming season of trial and transition. There is no reason for us to fear for though the journey may be difficult at times, incredible blessing is ahead for the people of God. William Barclay explains the value of these trials well:

Peirasmos is trial or testing directed towards an end, and the end is that he who is tested should emerge stronger and purer from the test­ing…The idea is not that of seduction into sin but of strengthening and purifying. For instance, a young bird is said to test (peirazein) its wings. The Queen of Sheba was said to come to test (peirazein) the wisdom of Solomon…The experiences in Israel were tests which went to the making of the people of Israel (Deut.4:34; Deut.7:19).

…All kinds of experiences will come to us. There will be the test of the sorrows and the disappointments which seek to take our faith away. There will be the test of the seductions which seek to lure us from the right way. There will be the tests of the dangers, the sacrifices, the unpopularity which the Christian way must so often involve. But they are not meant to make us fall; they are meant to make us soar. They are not meant to defeat us; they are meant to be defeated. They are not meant to make us weaker; they are meant to make us stronger. Therefore we should not bemoan them; we should rejoice in them. The Christian is like the athlete. The heavier the course of training he undergoes, the more he is glad, because he knows that it is fitting him all the better for victorious effort.

The times we are in are not meant to overwhelm us; on the contrary they are meant to help us access our full spiritual potential. If it was not for the trial of the treadmill, I would have never discovered what my body was capable of achieving. The same is true spiritually. We are in a time when God is bringing out the greatness of the Spirit of Jesus within His people. If our hearts are like gold, then the trials are like fires that reveal our full brilliance.

Knowing this, we do not need to go into the future expecting to become victims of a hostile world, and neither can we make it our goal just to survive. Like elite athletes, we must be people of zeal who know that reaching our goal will require effort and sacrifice. Like expert soldiers, we must look past the momentary pain of the training