Made to Worship

(because I am limited in the number of items I can post, I will use this to periodically update my blog postings, deleting old ones as I run out of space. Feel free to scroll through the titles and see what looks interesting to you. For the rest of my blogs, you can visit http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=47074037)

3-10-08
Invisible Revival

I remember Chris once asking what made a healed hand more amazing than a healed heart. I agreed that a healed heart was more amazing because even doctors can heal a hand, but only God can bring wholeness to our hearts. But the truth is, that healed hand is so much more visible and too often I get caught up in the visible.

I sometimes get discouraged when I hear stories about revivals, because I don’t see revival around here. I don’t see throngs of people coming before God, falling on their knees in repentance, and being set aflame with passion for God. Our prayer room is silent and empty and the passion for night and day prayer seems to be a thing of the past. I see no miracles.

But then God reminds me that revival isn’t about the visible, about the healed hands. This whole prayer thing isn’t just a way to “tap into” God’s power so we can see miracles. Sometimes it does that, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about God. It’s about coming to know Him. It’s about sitting at His feet. It’s about the transformation that occurs within us as we draw close to Him, making us more and more like Jesus. It’s about the way the God changes us within, giving us new hearts, natural hearts (Ezekiel 11:19-20).

That’s what God did in my own heart, what He continues to do in my heart. He met me and took my heart, full of it’s own prideful goals and obsessions, and He changed it. He gave me a new heart, a heart that desires Him, even when my flesh still fights against it. And I will never be the same. Praise the Lord! I will never be the same! The change is coming slowly, but God is reviving me deep inside. I can’t talk about the miracles I’ve seen, but I can talk about this, about my changed heart. Like John writes about, this is what I have heard, what I have seen with my own eyes, what I have looked upon and touched, this is the gospel in my own life, my testimony to the saving power of God (1 John 1:1-4).

And I do see God working in other people’s hearts, too. It’s only among a few and the change is still so small, sometimes missed among all the weaknesses and struggles that still remain. But God is speaking and working and changing and convicting. And isn’t that the beginning of revival? It doesn’t start in a group or event, but deep inside us, in the invisible places.

3-7-08
The Pursuit of Joy

Thursday night I watched “The Pursuit of Happyness” (starring Will Smith), which follows the story of Chris, a struggling salesman who decides to pursue a career as a stock broker because the stock brokers all look so happy to him. He loses his wife, his house, and all his money in the process – everything but his son – but still persists and finally earns a job at the firm, eventually becoming a millionaire. The movie emphasizes Chris’ relationship with his son and the care for his family that motivated his actions, but I was still disappointed in the ending. It implied that happiness comes from getting a good job and making lots of money. I had hoped that the movie would show how those successful businessmen at the firm weren’t necessarily as happy as they appeared to be, but it didn’t. I had even almost hoped that Chris wouldn’t get the job in the end, but instead would find happiness without it, discovering that happiness doesn’t come from a fancy job and millions of dollars. But instead the movie followed the route of the typical American dream where the underdog works his way up to the top of the ladder.

Lately I’ve been listening to a sermon series called “The Rebel’s Guide to Joy” by Mark Driscoll (I would highly recommend listening to it; you can find it at http://www.marshillchurch.org/sermonseries/philippians/). The message that Mark teaches about joy stands in stark contrast to the moral that “The Pursuit of Happyness” preaches. He describes Joy as a lifestyle that celebrates the forward progress of the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than as an emotion. Because every situation is an opportunity for the gospel to go forward, there is nothing that can block this kind of joy. This joy is possible even in suffering, even in the midst of the darkest days and deepest hurts that we know, because we can see even those as an opportunity for God to be glorified and the good news of His saving gospel to go forth. Even in the midst of that darkness, we can rejoice because we see that there is a purpose in our suffering. In those times, people can see the difference that Jesus makes in our lives and it can compel others to seek Him. Rather than wasting our suffering in self-pity and bitterness, defining ourselves by that pain, we should use it to proclaim the freedom and saving power of Christ (Mark quotes East Stanley Jones, an American missionary to India: “Don’t bear trouble….use it!”).

Corrie Ten Boom’s story in “The Hiding Place” so profoundly illustrates this concept of joy in suffering. She and her sister Betsie spent months in the German concentration camps during World War Two, starved, beaten, and neglected, crammed into flea-ridden bunks and forced to work long hours for their enemy’s cause, but even in the midst of that nightmarish setting, they shared the word of God with those around them, gathering people to worship, praying for their captors, and taking joy at the transformation God worked in those around them. Corrie describes how Betsie almost seemed as at peace with their ministry there in the concentration camp as she had ever been at home: “I had the feeling, almost, that to Betsie it didn’t matter….the first week we were here she had added extra hooks to the neck of her overalls so that she could fasten the collar high around her throat and, this propriety taken care of, I had the feeling she was as content to be reading the Bible here in Vught to those who had never heard it as she’d been serving soup to hungry people in the hallway of the Beje” (“The Hiding Place,” Corrie Ten Boom, 182-83).

I want to have the kind of joy that she had, the kind of joy that does not rest on circumstances or success. So often I slip into depression because what I’m doing right now seems so meager, so insignificant. I scramble to remedy those feelings by trying to make plans for a more significant future, one in which I will do many good and significant things so that I can make myself feel useful and important in God’s kingdom. If I could just get to that place, surely I would find that joy I crave. When people ask me about my life, I’m quick to define myself by what I do with ACT and by those plans for the future. I’m just a cashier until I can get there.

But the funny thing is, I love being a cashier. I get to serve people all day. I get to smile and joke and brighten their day. I get to talk to people and probe into their lives. Sometimes a simple question about dinner or the weather or the upcoming holiday opens the door to allow them to share all sorts of things. People talk about mission trips to Mexico, about hometowns in other countries, about newborn grandchildren or their kid’s birthday, about dancing in the good old days. Some even confide in me about how their wife is the hospital or how they’re worried about an upcoming surgery. And I pray for them. They’ve become friends and neighbors, people who know me by name and miss me when I’m not there.

Would it be so horrible to be a cashier like that for the rest of my life? The world tells me that I should be more ambitious, that I should climb that ladder to success and chase the American dream. But couldn’t I be content as a simple cashier? In Christ, couldn’t that be enough?

I’ve wasted so much time praying for God to send me anywhere but here, to show me where I’m really supposed to be. But lately He’s been teaching me to pray that He makes me fully content in Him, no matter where I am, even if it means staying where I am. Because what if this is where I’m supposed to be? I want to remain open to God’s leading if He does call me elsewhere, but I can’t demand or assume that He will call me to anything greater than this. Even right here, I can learn to live that lifestyle of joy.

This is going to be my last semester with ACT (I never felt called in to campus ministry full-time and I feel like my time there is done). God still hasn’t called me somewhere else, though, so it looks like I’ll still be in Toledo this fall, just not connected with any particular ministry. I think it will be good for me, actually. I’ll have to learn to identify myself with Jesus rather than with a particular ministry. I’ll no longer be able to fall back on ACT as proof that I’m living a Christian life. It’ll strip away a lot of my religiosity and I’ll be forced to really examine whether or not I’m living out Christ’s love in the world.

And more and more now, I have this desire to go out and spend time with people, to build relationships. I feel like my life has become so limited here, so boxed in. I’ve lived here over a year and I’ve never even met my neighbors for goodness sake! I’m not around people enough to see the gospel moving forward. No wonder I’ve lost that joy. I want to go places where there are people, to coffee shops and libraries and parks and anywhere that I might be able to interact with people, even complete strangers. I want to seek out situations where I can share the love of Christ, where I can see that forward movement of the gospel in my life. I’m tired of hiding away in my house. I want to learn to live joyfully in relationship with God and other people. I want to take advantage of every situation and every moment to glorify God. I want to find peace and contentment in that….I want to find that joy.

This has been a frustrating time for me because there hasn’t been much visible change in my life, but God’s been working a lot internally, and slowly the pieces seem to be coming together. May God give me the grace I need to be faithful right where He’s placed me.

2-29-08
The Good Work Begun In Us

I got an e-mail today from someone who is thinking about pioneering a campus ministry here at UT next year, asking about the situation for Christians here. So I responded, sharing what I knew about the different campus groups and talking about what I’d seen here in the past year.

It made me reflect on what I’ve seen God do here on this campus in the past year, particularly last spring. I remembered the prayer tent, remembered that vision that excited me and how I saw it become an actuality before my eyes, remembered the prayer walks through campus and the thrill of anticipation in that time. I remembered those cold, cold nights and damp days wrapped in blankets and huddled around the heater in the prayer tent, far from comfortable but excited to be where God was moving, remembered the excitement at each new prayer request on the walls, each new face that peered curiously into the tent, remembered helping hold up the tent while Maureen called for help the day it blew over . I remember Sammy’s talks, remembered that same excitement as we waited to see what God would do, and the joy when He made Himself present, and the piercing sorrow that convicted me and called me forth into the world, and the night when less than forty college students came together to pledge over three thousand dollars to build wells in Africa. And I remember the nights of prayer at ACT, the long hours talking about what God was doing, the passion of that place.

More than the specifics of that time, though, I remember the feeling of it. I felt alive then. I had no doubt that God was going to work in this place. I’d seen the beginnings of it and I was sure that the best was yet to come. Even though there was still pain and struggles, the love of that time lifted me up and the hope pushed me forwards. I looked towards the future with anticipation. I felt so alive.

It feels so far from where we are now, from where I am now. Why? I still struggle to understand what happened between then and now. I see so little growth around me now. It seems like God is barely stirring. I have to strain to catch even the faintest whisper of His presence here. Nearly all the people who shared that passion of seeking God have been dispersed from here and the few that remain in the area are lifetimes away in their hearts. I know God is still working in my life, but it’s been in such quiet, internal ways that I almost miss it in all the turmoil. Most days I barely feel alive and that hope and anticipation are all but gone. I feel like I’m wandering down a dry river bed through a desert, remember when it once rushed and gurgled with water and life.

Campus Ohio is preparing to kick off another forty days of 24-7 prayer (I’ll be heading to Delaware, Ohio, for that tomorrow). I sent out dozens of e-mails about it several weeks ago and dozens more since then. Only one person from UT responded. Even in ACT – especially in ACT – nobody seems interested in praying. This place that was so full of passion for God and a desire to seek him has been overrun with apathy.

I struggle with it, because I know there’s still so much left to do here. God started a good work in us, a work full of such promise. So why did the rivers suddenly dry up? Why did the warriors leave? Sometimes it seems impossible that that work will ever be completed now. I know this is something that we can’t do of ourselves, but can only happen when God sets the fire and draws our hearts back to Him. And for so long now I haven’t seen any movement.

But I remember what Paul wrote to the church in Philippi:

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 1:6

And I remember the story in Ezekiel 37:1-14, where God tells Ezekiel to prophesy over the valley of bones and they rise up, an army alive.

Lord, come and complete the work you begin in us here! Please give me the confidence that You will complete it, that nothing is impossible with You. Please send your rivers again and raise up warriors from these bones!

2-24-08
Looking Towards the Promised Land

“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1

The theme of ACT’s retreat this semester was “Awakening”, but the theme of what God was speaking to me this past weekend was more along the lines of “Faith.” I spent a lot of time reflecting on the faith of Abraham in particular.

In Genesis 12:1-3, God tells Abraham to leave his home, his family, to leave the comfort of the familiar. He promises to make a great nation of Abraham, a blessing to all the communities of the earth. When God sends Abraham out, He promises him a land for his inheritance, but He doesn’t tell him where or give him a map of how to get there. He just tells him to pack up his family and belongings and leave.

But even so, Abraham packed up and went. Hebrews says:

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.” – Hebrews 1:8

There were times when Abraham doubted that promise, especially as the years went on and he and Sarah remained childless. In Genesis 15:1-6, he complains that God’s promises won’t do him any good if he doesn’t have a some. But God reminds Abraham of His promise to him, and Abraham renews his faith in God, and God “credited it to him as an act of righteousness.”

God had promised Abraham great things: descendants more countless than the stars and a promised land for his inheritance. The only piece of this that Abraham ever saw in His lifetime was the birth of His son Isaac, just as God had promised, but it was enough for him and he trusted that if God was faithful in fulfilling that first part of His promise, He would fulfill the rest, even if it took generations.

Abraham never saw the promised land fulfilled in his lifetime. Neither did Isaac. Or Jacob. Or Joseph….or any of Abraham’s descendants up through Moses. But even so, they kept faith that God would fulfill His promise to them. Joseph, on his death bed, reminds his brothers of this promise: “Joseph said to his brothers: ‘I am about to die. God will surely take care of you and lead you out of this land to the land that he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’” (Genesis 50:24).

Hebrews tells us:

“All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” – Hebrews 11: 13-16

They continued to look towards the hope of the promised land. But they did not demand to see it in their lifetime or stake their hope on the immediate future. They understood that God’s plan was bigger than their lifetime and that their part in it was brief. And they knew that, as wonderful as the promised land would be, even that land was not their homeland, even that was not the final goal. They knew that even as God was preparing the promised land for their descendants, He was preparing a heavenly city for them and that was the true promise and the hope by which they lived.

“By faith he [Abraham] sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.” – Hebrews 11:9-10

As I reflected on all this, God reminded me that His promise to me, like to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants, is one of a future Heavenly home. God has promised fruit in this present world and has given me the privilege of being a part in that plan, however small, but I cannot demand that He fulfill all His promises in my lifetime so I can see them. All I can do is listen to His calling, go when He says go, and trust that just as He has been faithful in so many things, He will be faithful in things to come.

“The movement of Abraham is a paradigm of all authentic faith. It is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, and not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. Each future determination, each next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of the influence of God in the present moment. ‘By faith Abraham when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going’ (Hebrews 11:8). The reality of a Christian is that of men or women who leave what is nailed down, obvious, and secure and who walk into the desert without rational explanations to justify their decisions or to guarantee their future. Why? Solely and simply because God signals this movement and offers it his promise.” – Brennan Manning, “The Signature of Jesus”

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.” – Hebrews 12:1-2
1-21-08
Picking Up My Armor

“Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day an, having done everything, to hold your ground. So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful with all perseverance and supplication for all the holy ones and also for me, that speech may be given me to open my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, so that I may have the courage to speak as I must.” – Ephesians 6:10-20

I realized the other day just how vulnerable I have become to the devil. I’m not even sure when I began to shed the armor of God that I once wore, but I know that I’ve been wandering around without it for quite a while now. I have wandered with nothing on my head to protect my thoughts from the whispered lies, no shield in my hand to quench all the arrows of darkness, and no sword to fight back. The affects of that vulnerability have been devastating in my life. I’ve just stood and let the arrows come, the lies take root, and the darkness wrap around me. I didn’t even remember that I owned armor. No wonder I’ve been struggling so much.

But now I’ve remembered and I’m trying to go back and pick up the armor I dropped along the way, especially the Word of God and His truth.

A particular piece of that truth that I’ve picked back up is this passage from James:

“Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it.” – James 1:2-5

A note in my bible on this passages says: “Wisdom: a gift that God readily grants to all who ask in faith and that sustains the Christian in times of trial. It is a kind of knowledge or understanding not accessible to the unbeliever or those who doubt, which gives the recipient an understanding of the real importance of events. In this way a Christian can deal with adversity with great calm and hope.” This was a truth that helped sustain me a year ago as I prayed for the wisdom to see things the way God sees them and I think it’s one I need to wield again now more than ever.

Lord, please help me take joy in my trials, seeing them as you see them and knowing that they are preparing me for your plan.

1-9-08
b}A Call to Bleed

In Red Moon Rising, Pete Greig tells the story of a young man named Paul and what he stood up to say at one of the 24-7 prayer gatherings. I wanted to share it with you, because it captures something so crucial to intercession and our call to pray for others with compassion:

“My sister has anorexia. She’s 26 years old and weighs just seventy pounds. The anorexia is so bad that she’s now developed arthritis so she can’t even dress herself or straighten her hands. She also seems to have diabetes and is going through menopause twenty years too early. She isn’t a Christian; she just seems to have been robbed of everything: her womanhood, her future, her dignity, her life.

“I’m here to confess something to you….I don’t even pray for her. I’ve been asking myself, ‘Why not? Don’t I care? Yes, I care! Do I believe in prayer? Yes, of course!’ The reason I don’t pray for my sister is because it’s just too painful. To pray for her is to think about her situation. It means identifying with her and feeling her pain. So I find it easier just to forget the whole thing and pretend it’s not happening.

“But God’s been challenging me to feel my sister’s pain, because that’s actually what it means to truly intercede. I also believe God is challenging us as a movement of young people to dare to feel the pain all around us. To move from praying ‘for’ people from the comfort of our own salvation to interceding ‘with’ them from a position of need.

“Here’s the question: ‘Will we allow the things that break God’s heart to break our hearts too?’ It’ll mean more tears, more listening. It may even be the reason why so many of us struggle with our own personal burdens and heartaches – God is allowing us to feel the pain, to be weak and broken so that our prayers have power.

“Intercession means weeping for the earthquake victims in the news right now, and for the anorexics, the drug abusers, the sexually abused, the friends who don’t know Jesus. And God says that if we will stand in the gap in this way, bridging the ravine between a hurting generation and a healing God – we will see breakthrough, a new level of effectiveness in prayer. In short, there will be very great power in our pain, or, in the words of The Vision, we will weep ‘sulphuric tears.’

“This is a tough word isn’t it? We’re so often told to trust Jesus for a problem-free existence. But what if the call to prayer is a call to bleed as well as to receive blessing? Maybe we’ll run out of words in the prayer room and just join the Spirit in praying with ‘groans that words cannot express.’ Maybe our passion will consume us until we actually live out our prayers in practical action? Will you carry this cross? Can you receive it?” (“Red Moon Rising,” p.161-162)

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Over a year ago, God began teaching me this lesson in powerful ways, but somehow since them I’ve forgotten it. Or maybe I’ve deliberately turned away. Bearing someone’s burdens with them is hard and when I ceased to go before God daily to be renewed in the waters of His love and grace, I became worn out from trying to bear those burdens on my own. When I entered a time of my own personal pain, rather than mutually sharing my burdens with those around me, giving and taking in that compassion, I just shut people out, hardening my heart to everyone and focusing on trying to heal my own pain. It was selfish and it was in complete disobedience to God’s call in my life.

But I want to intercede with compassion again. I want to return to that call that I felt so strongly on my life before, to come before Him, laden with the pains and burdens of those around me, leaning against one another as we limp towards His throne, to weep with Him there for the pain of His beloved ones. And recently I’ve begun to feel the tugging of God’s heart again as He pulls me back towards that call.

I think that I’m beginning to grasp the connection between my desire to intercede and my desire to serve those around me (only beginning, though)….

Lord, please break my heart with the things that break your heart.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” – Romans 12:15

“[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” – 1 Corinthians 13:7


1-3-08
A New Way to Love

I saw such wisdom in this passage from “The Hiding Place” that I wanted to share it. It’s from the part of the book right after the man Corrie had loved for years announced that he was engaged to another girl:

How long I lay on my bed sobbing for the one love of my life I do not know. Later, I heard Father’s footsteps coming up the stairs. For a moment I was a little girl again waiting for him to tuck the blankets tight. But this was a hurt that no blanket could shut out, and suddenly I was afraid of what Father would say. Afraid he would say, ‘There’ll be someone else soon,’ and that forever this untruth would lie between us. For in some deep part of me I knew already that there would not – soon or ever – be anyone else.

The sweet cigar-smell came into the room with Father. And of course he did not say the false, idle words.

“Corrie,” he began instead, “do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain.

“There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.

“God loves Karel – even more than you do – and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way.”

I did not know, as I listened to Father’s footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this – places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.

I was still in kindergarten in these matters of love. My task just then was to give up my feeling for Karel without giving up the joy and wonder that had grown with it. And so, that very hour, lying there on my bed, I whispered the enormous prayer:

“Lord, I give to You the way I feel about Karel, my thoughts about our future – oh, You know! Everything! Give me Your way of seeing Karel instead. Help me to love him that way. That much.”

And even as I said the words I fell asleep. (“The Hiding Place,” by Corrie Ten Boom, p. 44-45)

And God did answer that prayer. Four years later at her sister’s wedding, she thought of Karel and all the hopes and dreams she had carries for them, and “with the thought of Karel – all shining round with love as thoughts of him had been since I was fourteen – came not the slightest trace of hurt” and she was able to genuinely pray for him and his wife, “a prayer, I knew for sure, that could not have sprung unaided from Corrie Ten Boom” (p. 49).

I think God is always eager to answer prayers like that, prayers asking Him to make us more like Him, because that’s what He intended for us all along. As Paul wrote, we are supposed to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God, not to be conformed to this world but to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2) and so that we may have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

“Love is patient; love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

1-2-08
Divine Movement

“History Belongs to the Intercessors” – Walter Wink

Hey fre@k,
you’re an alien on planet earth
a million miles from home.
You hear voices
(the call of the wild).
And deep down you know
you are more than you have become:
(Tomorrow exists in you today)
History belongs to the intercessors.
So do you dare to be alone with God?
Do you dare to share
the prayer burden for an entire generation?
Light the fire and watch it spread:
nonstop prayer
across the nations
for a generation lost in space.
“Pray continually” (Jesus)
Simple as that.

(from “Red Moon Rising,” by Pete Greig, p. 127)

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OneThing just finished a couple days ago in Kansas City where thousands of young people gathered to pray, worship, and seek after God, after that “one thing” that matters. I can’t tell you how much I wish I had been there. When people were making plans to go, I went back and forth about whether or not I should go because I didn’t want to go for the wrong reasons. I especially didn’t want to go expecting it to be last year (because last year was so significant for me in so many ways) and then end up so distracted by the fact that it wasn’t like last year that I’d miss the new things that God was doing this year. I stalled in making a decision, waiting on God to confirm whether I should go or not. Finally the deadline came and I had to make a decision. I still hadn’t heard from God yet, so I told them I wasn’t going. By the time I realized how much I really did want to go, it was too late to get the time off of work and make the necessary arrangements. And by then everyone from ACT who was planning to go had decided not to go either.

This past weekend I went with my friend Bethany to Redeemer Fellowship Church in Monroe. I walked in to find them playing “Come and Let Your Presence Fill This Place” by Merchant Band (I’m not sure that’s the official title, but those of you who have heard Merchant Band probably know what song I’m talking about). During the service, they talked about how they were going to be starting a monthly worship and intercession night (several people from the church, including the worship leader, had recently visited IHOP). They also described some of the things they hoped to do with the young adult ministry this coming year and talked about the ministry school which they are going to be opening this coming fall. And a young man stood up to talk about how he felt led by the Spirit to go talk to this stranger and to pray with him, and how the man had been healed of pain in his leg. I could see that God was clearly working among these people. And they clearly delighted in Him, singing and dancing with abandon before Him (young children and adults alike, both men and women, danced and waved flags at the front of the church as we worshipped). If it wasn’t so far and I had a car, I think I’d go there more.

And I’m still reading “Red Moon Rising,” slowly working my way through the story of the 24-7 movement that started in England about eight years ago and has swept over the whole world. It’s full of stories of people wandering into the prayer room and staying for hours and never being the same again, of groups praying non-stop for months, of people whose lives have been completely changed by an encounter with God in the prayer room, of how God was drawing people together in prayer all over the world: England, Sweden, Romania, Taiwan, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, the United States, China, Australia, Prague, and beyond.

I hear these stories of healings and of people being set on fire for God, of people praying through the night and carrying the gospel to the far corners of the world, stories of God’s presence so visible and active in these places, and something in my heart cries out “YES! I want to be there!….I want to be part of that!” I want to be where I see God moving. I want to be somewhere where people are waking up. I want to be woken up again myself. I want to be alive again. Because right now it feels like I’ve died, like my life has gone dry. I’m just here, walking to and fro, going to work, reading and thinking, but not living. I want to live with hope again, with anticipation and joy and excitement at what God is doing around me.

I want to be somewhere like that. But I can’t be. Instead I’m here in Toledo, without a car, sitting by the bedside of a dying ministry and watching my friends drift away. It’s a far cry from the community I long for.

I keep reminding myself that God’s presence isn’t confined to conferences or even prayer rooms, to certain cities or certain groups, that He has promised to be with me wherever I am. I have to remind myself that God can move here in this place just as much as He is moving in all these other places. I know He has kept me here for a reason. And until He opens the door and tells me to go, I’ll stay here, on my knees before Him asking Him to come and move here, too, to transform lives and change our hearts here, to pour out His presence on us here. I will answer the call to pray for my generation. Because I know that only God can change our hearts.

But it could be a long wait. And there are all these nagging voices in my head telling me that I’ve got it all wrong, that I’m waiting in vain, that God won’t move in the ways I long for Him to move, that I don’t understand it at all. I don’t know. Maybe I do have it all wrong. I don’t know. But I do know that God’s Word tells me that we are transformed when we behold God and that He changes our hearts and sets us free. And really, that is what I am praying for and what I want to lead people to.

But this is a lonely place for me to be. Even when I’m around people, I feel removed from them somehow, because there’s this kind of desperation in me that has me striving after this with everything I have left to give. I quickly become restless with the normal things people talk about because I know there’s so much more that we should be reaching for. And it seems like there’s no one left around me who is actively striving after this, too. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one left here interceding. Sometimes I feel like a freak.

In the past month or so I’ve felt this desire for God growing within me and I feel that He is preparing me for something momentous in my life, but at the same time, I feel this restlessness that has left me incredibly unsettled. Sometimes it feels like it’s going to drive me crazy before whatever it is comes to fruit.

This song has been on my heart a lot through all this:

“Beg” - by Shane and Shane

Here I am
One more day of not
Loving Him the way He asks
In fact my heart is singing praises to the things
that make me feel alright

So I’m sinking fast like a stone heart should
And on the way down
I’ve done what I could
To try and try to turn this stone to flesh

I’m haunted by my God
Who has the right to ask me
What by the nature of my rebellion
I cannot give.

So I beg for you to move
I beg for you to move
I beg for you to break through

So here I am
Got my deeds for the day
All my cute little words about
How I am saved
Am I saved?

Could I love you with my mouth like a church kid should
At the end of the day
My words get burned as wood
Oh, but I was good.

I’m haunted by my God
Who has the right to ask me
What by the nature of my rebellion
I cannot give.

These songs are noise
In your ears
A clanging drum

------------------------------

I just read back over what I wrote and realized that this blog kind of goes all over the place . Sorry about that. I just wanted to share a little bit of what’s been on my mind and heart lately.


12-24-07
Remember and Rejoice

“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through ,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not overcome it.” – John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word. Even before there was time, there was the Word and already God had His plan for our salvation in His Son. As we read the prophets and flip through the pages of history, we can see this plan unfolding before us, God’s saving hand on His people.

We see the direct and startling significance of the cross and resurrection in our lives, but it’s easy to pass over the humble stable and simple birth of Christ, to see it as “cute” and focus on the festive celebration, forgetting the magnitude of this mystery.

But on Christmas, on this day that we celebrate Christ’s birth, we remember that God had the cross and His plan for our salvation in mind even from the moment of Christ’s birth in the stable – even from the beginning of time – that His love for us was so great that He planned for this moment for all of history, choosing this moment to send His beloved Son to take on the form of man. We remember on this day the glorious fulfillment of God’s plan and promise in this humble birth.

“And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14

Let all of Heaven and earth remember and rejoice on this day!

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
for he has visited and brought redemption to his people.
He has raised up a horn for our salvation
within the house of David his servant,
even as he promised the mouth of his holy
prophets from of old:
salvation from our enemies and from the hand
of all who hate us,
to show mercy to our fathers
and to be mindful of his holy covenant
and of the oath he swore to Abraham our father,
and to grant us that,
rescued from the hand of enemies,
without fear we might worship him
in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.” – Luke 1:68-75

Merry Christmas to all of you and a blessed New Year!


12-22-07
A Godly Woman

I think all the pink books would have told me that I’d reached the women’s section of the bookstore, even if the sign didn’t declare it. I was at LifeWay last night, looking for a Christmas gift for my family and had stopped by the women’s section to look for ideas for our women’s study. As I browsed, though, I became increasingly frustrated and discouraged. All the books seemed to be about the same, variations on the same few themes. And they all seemed so….stereotypical….so limited, shallow even.

I’ve read and heard so many definitions of what it means to be a Christian woman. I’ve read Proverbs 31 (the classic description of the ideal wife). I’ve looked through shelf upon shelf of books that claim to reveal “the question every woman asks” (“Do You Think I’m Beautiful?” by Angela Thomas) or unveil “the mystery of a woman’s soul” (“Captivating” by John and Stasi Eldredge). They talk about these deep desires for beauty and romance, the desire to be a princess, desired and beloved, desires that they say are at the core of every woman. And they say that to live as a woman of God, free in Him, means to find those desires for beauty and romance fulfilled in God.

While those desires capture a part of who I am as a woman, they fall short in so many ways. I do want to be desired and romanced (like I wrote about in my note a few months ago, “A Treasure Worth Pursuing”). I do hold that sweet hope of a husband and a family some day. I do have a desire to love and nurture those around me that motivates how I live my life. And there’s something about beauty (in so many forms) that seems to stir my soul to life again. And yes, I do like to dress up pretty now and then and even sniffle over a sappy romantic movie on occasion.

But romance and beauty aren’t the deepest desires of my soul. Deeper still, my soul hungers for the indescribable presence of God. It desires to see people transformed by the love of God. I’ve heard stories of Christians who lived a life of raw honesty in their faith that makes me itch to break out of the complacency of the modern American church. I long to live a radical life completely surrendered to God. These desires are far stronger in me and pierce much deeper than the delicate desire for romance and beauty. These desires are a raging fire, an aching void. They have drastically changed my life. But they sure don’t fit the stereotype of a Christian woman. Can you imagine one of those perfectly manicured women on the cover of those books encouraging me to drop out of school and go live on the streets to love the homeless? I can’t.

I’ve heard people say that books like “Captivating” have set them free to pursue the desires they’ve secretly treasured since childhood, but gave up on once they entered the practical-minded world of adulthood. But by claiming that these are the deepest desires of our hearts, these desires for beauty and romance, they box us in. They imply that once we’ve unlocked these few stereotypical principles of what it means to be a woman of God, we need only put them into practice in our lives. We are not challenged to go beyond certain topics, to search deeper. If these are the deepest desires of our souls, why bother?

But beauty and romance, even fulfilled in God, are merely a tiny taste of who God is and the relationship He offers us. He calls us – all of us – so much deeper to so much more, to wander the infinite chambers of who He is.

I want to be a woman after God’s own heart, but more than that, I want to be a disciple of Christ, to follow in His footsteps and live as He lived, just like any other disciple, man or woman. I’ve searched and struggled over the question of what it really means to be a woman of God, what my sexuality has to do with the kind of person God has called me to be in Him. But tonight I realized that I won’t become a woman of God by looking at some womanly ideal, even one from the Bible. Only by looking to Jesus Christ and allowing Him to transform me into His image can I hope to hear my Father say, “This is my beloved daughter, with whom I am well pleased.” For a godly woman is a woman who walks in the footsteps of Christ, who clothes herself in His love and mercy and truth. Because all that is beautiful about us as a woman or a man is only beautiful because of the nature of God in whose image we were created.

“God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.” – Genesis 1:27


12-20-07
An Inside, Outside, Upside Down Kingdom

“I think there’s a danger spiritually, for many of us, that if God packed up and left town today we might not notice until tomorrow, or worse. We have strategies and structures that can easily bypass the Holy Spirit, strategies for funding, strategic ways of prioritizing time and advancing the kingdom which were ignored completely by Jesus. He allowed the woman with the issue of blood to divert His 911 call to a dying girl’s bedside. He never established a Bible school and never even thought of a name for His ministry. He prioritized people without influence, offended those with power, and apparently missed major ministry opportunities in order to picnic and pray.” (Pete Greig, “Red Moon Rising,” p. 31)

This passage reminded me again of something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, about how the kingdom of God functions according to a completely different set of principles than the world does.

Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like a woman who cleans her whole house to find one missing silver coin and then, once she finds it, throws a party to celebrate that would cost far more than all ten silver coins (Luke 15:8-10). The kingdom of God is also like a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to go find the one that was lost and then, again, throws a party to celebrate the return of even one sheep (Luke 15:4-7). And the kingdom of God is like a man who sells everything he owns to buy a field where he has found buried treasure (Matthew 13:44) or a man who sells everything he owns to buy one pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46).

Paul writes to the Corinthians about the contradictions of the ministry in this kingdom:

“We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful; as unrecognized and yet acknowledged; as dying and behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing and yet possessing all things.” – 2 Corinthians 6:8-10

But like the world, many American churches focus on size and numbers, judging the success of a ministry by how big it is, how many people it reaches, how much money it brings in. It’s so hard to break out of this mindset because it’s the wisdom of the world we’ve been raised in. When we look at the kingdom through the world’s eyes, it makes no sense at all. It’s taking me a while to learn how to live in this Kingdom of God where the first are last and the last are first, where the poor inherit the kingdom of God while the rich walk away sad, a kingdom where people throw away everything they have and waste their lives for just one found sheep and rejoice in that.


“Inside, Outside, Upside Down Kingdom” – Misty Edwards

I’m in love with a God who’s humble
I’m in love with a king who became a slave
And you gotta go down if you wanna go up
And you gotta go lower and lower if you wanna go higher and higher
Cause it’s the inside, outside, upside down kingdom
Where you lose to gain and you die to live