Michelle Heritage: ‘If it’s impossible, then God gets the glory’

Jemimah: Can you share a bit of the story of the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer? How did it start, and what’s the story behind the land?

Michelle: Twenty two years ago, Richard Gamble was carrying a life-size cross around Leicestershire during Holy Week. He really wanted to remind people why we celebrate Easter – not just the chocolate, but who Jesus was and why He died for us.

While he was doing that, he realised people were really starting to talk about the gospel. Once he completed the walk, he reflected on it, and God just downloaded to him this very quick flash of a landmark: one million bricks, one million answered prayers.

He really didn’t know much more than that for about ten years. He was praying into it, but after ten years God gave him the green light to go ahead with the project.

In 2016, we ran a RIBA competition. RIBA is the architectural body in the UK, so it was a global competition to design a landmark that would be about Jesus, made of one million bricks, with each brick featuring an answered prayer.

Paul Bulkeley – a Christian architect based down south, in Winchester – submitted a design. He prayed about the design, and this is the funny bit: we had 135 designs come in from all over the world, but Paul said it took him about two minutes because God just downloaded the design to him. It was that fast!

It’s taken about a decade for the engineers to work out how to realise that vision, because this is an incredibly complicated structure.

Jemimah: And yet it looks so simple.

Michelle: It does. It’s one of those beautifully deceptive designs. It’s an infinity loop. It soars 51 metres into the air and rests on the ground only on two earth bunds, which are holding the whole thing soaring upwards into the sky.

Rich and his wife had been invited to a conference in California, and there was a prophetic team praying over people during the conference, but they knew nothing about the people they were prophesying over.

‘Well, if God’s given us heavenly land, I’ll just pray, and let’s find out where it is.’

A lady came up to them and said, ‘God’s telling me that He’s got heavenly land put aside for you.’ At this point in the project, our head of intercession, Sue, was already on board, and she said to Rich, ‘Well, if God’s given us heavenly land, I’ll just pray, and let’s find out where it is.’

She prayed for two or three months about this, and then eventually, one day, she was cleaning her teeth and God just gave her a word. She knew it was something to do with the land.

So she went off and Googled it. It turned out that the word was about a dental practice in the Midlands. When she looked at the dental practice, there was a field just over the motorway from it, which she circled. She felt really strongly that God was saying that was the land that Eternal Wall would be built on. She went back to Rich. He was actually having a meeting the following week with the person who owned the land. These things just don’t happen by chance! Rich pitched his heart out, not knowing that the man he was talking to had actually heard a word from God as well. Six months previously, the landowner had been told by God to start a trust fund. The fund was there because one day there would be a landmark that was built that would point people to Jesus.

It really is the most amazing piece of land. It’s at the M42 junction with the M6, so you’ve got two significant motorways going past it every day. HS2 is now being built, so we’re right in the HS2 world, with the railway tracks coming right next to the land. I love God’s sense of humour because it’s just before HS2 finishes at New Street, and the rails have to go around a bend, so the HS2 trains are forced to slow down. It’s a prime viewing position for people to see Eternal Wall.

Jemimah: Can you tell us about your career? You haven’t always been involved in prayer?

Michelle: I think, like many people in Christian ministry, it’s not a career path! I worked in teaching for a long time. I was heading up the vocals course at a Christian ministry school called Nexus, which ran for 26 years in Coventry. After that, I went into mainstream teaching, so I was teaching in local schools for about ten years. Interestingly, in 2018, I was feeling like I’d come to the end of this season and there was a stretch coming, but I didn’t know what it looked like. So I was asking God, ‘What does the stretch look like?’

Then one day, God woke me up. Bearing in mind I was still looking for the stretch – what’s the new job? – He said, ‘Get in touch with your old boss from Nexus, and by the way, do it this week. Don’t faff around like you usually do!’ So I got in touch with my old boss and met him for coffee. I didn’t really know why, but we were sat chatting and it was really great to reconnect. He said, ‘Oh, I’m doing some work for Eternal Wall now.’

As we talked, he then said, ‘In fact, there’s a job that’s just coming up at Eternal Wall. I just knew that I had to leave work and join this team. Within three weeks, I’d handed in my notice. But God was so kind in it because it was so obvious. I didn’t feel concerned about the finances or what that might look like. I’m a single parent, so money is a consideration because I’m the only earner. But at the same time, I’ve always trusted God in that area of my life.

It was really encouraging to just know, ‘Well, He’s confirmed it. I know this job is for me.’ The doubt and all those questions went out of the window, and I knew that He would provide.

Jemimah: So what does your job entail?

Michelle: My job has changed over the years. I’ve been with Eternal Wall for nearly seven years. I was the Head of the Global Archive of Answered Prayers, but what we’ve transitioned into now is that my job title is Chief Partnerships Officer.

That’s because we now have a team of us gathering answered prayers. I work alongside a couple of amazing women, including Emma, who is Head of the Answered Prayer Database and oversees the gathering of testimonies throughout history. That means looking at archives, books and publications, finding out about what God was doing during key moments in history and through key figures in history.

Jemimah: How has your job encouraged you? And do you have an answered prayer that you’ve submitted for a brick?

Michelle: Yes. I think I’ve got about 70 at the moment! I haven’t kept a total tally, but I like to use it almost like an answered-prayer journal because it’s a really good discipline.

It’s so easy to forget the things that God has done. One of the huge encouragements for me was that I started this job in January 2020, and very shortly afterwards we went into full lockdown. We’d just launched a campaign called 10,000 Testimonies, where we were gathering answered prayers on social media and encouraging people to post their own stories.

Jemimah: Is there a particular story that’s come in that’s really touched you?

Michelle: I think one that touched all of us really is about World War II. It’s about a guy called Spencer January, an American soldier who was involved in World War II. He and his platoon were pinned down by German machine guns. They had to make it across a clearing into the woods to get to safety, but every time somebody tried to move out from the trees, the machine gun made it obvious they weren’t going to get across.

Spencer was hiding with his back against a tree, and he just prayed, ‘God, just do something. Send a cloud. Do something.’ Then something really interesting happened because a cloud came down and covered the field, giving them just enough time to get across to the woods and into safety. That seems like an amazing answer to prayer, right?

Two weeks later, he received a letter in the army mail from his mother saying, ‘Do you remember that strange woman in our church who’s an intercessor?’ She couldn’t remember her name. She said that two weeks earlier this woman had been woken up by God to pray for Spencer in the night. God had said, ‘Spencer’s in trouble. You need to pray for him.’

She prayed through the night and, at 6am, said, ‘God, I’ve got to go to work. Over to you. Send a cloud.’ Spencer read this, realised the timings and it changed his life. He realised, ‘Wow, in that moment, God absolutely had me covered, and He sent the answer even though I couldn’t speak to this woman.’ The power of prayer just hit home to him.

Jemimah: It’s such an amazing resource. What opposition have you faced, and how have you overcome it?

Michelle: I think we’re very aware that we’re in a spiritual battle. Particularly in our office, we’ve had Scriptures put all over the walls. One of the key Scriptures is from Revelation, where it says, ‘They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.’

We’re really trying to encourage people: your story is powerful and you need to share it. It’s a biblical mandate. It is the DNA of the early Church. If you look at the book of Acts, Peter and John say again and again, ‘We are witnesses.’

Our job at Eternal Wall is to equip the Church to share testimony. Our biggest team is actually our intercessory team. Every obstacle that has been overcome on the project – planning permission, getting the right builders and contractor, wind-tunnel testing, concrete testing, bat surveys, archaeological digs – all of that has been through prayer.

Jemimah: Is there something you’d love people to know about the Eternal Wall?

Michelle: I think with all of these God dreams, if it’s something that you think God’s putting in your heart and it’s just impossible, humanly speaking, that’s generally really good news. Because if it’s impossible, then God gets the glory.

There have been many times when we’ve said that as a team. We’re a really small team delivering a really big project, but it’s really not down to us. It’s down to God. So many times we’ve said, ‘Well, this bit of the project looks impossible, but that’s good news because that’s where the testimony is going to come from.’

I’d just encourage people: if you feel like God’s giving you a dream that’s too big, it may well be from God. Get some wise counsel and people around you to pray. Because it’s birthed in prayer, and then see what God does.

www.eternalwall.org.uk