Hello New Year New Beginning...How I Have Been Waiting For You

January 23, 2011

So as this new year has begun, I can’t help but be thankful that the Lord has brought me though the most painful season of my life thus far, grateful for where He currently has me, and I’m hopeful for what the future may hold. I got to come home for Christmas and it was a really good week. I got some warm fuzzy family time, good quality sister hang out time, and even got to hang out with some people I really miss. (Not all but a lot) Then it was back to KC for Onething. Which was kinda different this year because I signed up to serve and I ushered basically all day each day. It was good but my legs were so tired at the end of the night! Luckily I got brand new tennis shoes that don’t give my feet blisters for Christmas. Praise the Lamb! Onething was kind of a defining moment for me this year. Sure the teaching was great and the worship was beyond amazing, but it was during onething that I had the sudden realization that I am good. I made it through. I was thinking back to last year and how my heart was this exact time last year and I was just a huge mess. I was miserable and depressed and I was walking on eggshells afraid to run into the people who hurt my heart. But this year, I knew they were there and even saw them and had a brief conversation it didn’t faze me. I think it was the second to last day and I remember this overwhelming feeling that I really was good and I had made it through. The Lord has been so faithful. Now obviously the Lord still has a lot of healing to do on my heart and He’s slowly but surely doing it in His time and in His way, but I really am good =)

Now that being said, I am so grateful for where the Lord has me. I started another semester of school this past week and oh my gosh! I am overwhelmed that the Lord is allowing me to be here and to get such deep teaching from such amazing teachers. Never in a million years would I have ever thought I would actually like school! Haha go figure. God gave me my heart’s desire this semester and I got to go back on the Nightwatch. I didn’t even wait until school started. I was there as soon as onething was over. Oh how I have missed it. I don’t do the whole 12-6 like I did in fire in the night but I do 12-4 am, 6 nights a week. So I basically go home at 4 and then sleep until 2 each day, except for a couple where I wake up really early for class at 1. That’s rough but so far I’ve been good. Plus I can always take a nap if I need to. Our schedule this semester is really intense and I think we’ll have a lot more homework and less free time but I’m good with that. That’s the season the Lord has me in anyway.

I have 2 classes this semester. The first one is the Excellencies of Christ with Allen Hood. I actually took this class in fire in the night so it’s a repeat and I’m really excited to take it again with the guy who actually wrote the class. He said he hasn’t taught it since 2008 so I feel really lucky to be here when he teaches it again. Now while I am excited, at the same time I also very aware that it was this particular class that began to show me my yuck and darkness and how I actually do need a savior. If you remember my past blogs, that was rough. So I am preparing to see more of my darkness and bracing myself to encounter much more death to self. That part always sucks! Then my other class is Foundations of Prophetic Ministry and it’s taught by Shelley Hundley. I wasn’t fully sure what to think about this class, but then the first day of class I pretty much cried the whole class so I know the Lord is getting ready to use it. There’s even like 6 or 7 classes on different seers in the Bible. No coincidence there!

Ok so now the deep stuff. What is God doing in my heart? Loaded question. God is asking me to be His friend. Now here’s the thing. This is not the first time He’s asked me that. When I went to the Call 7/7/07 in Nashville, they had prophecy tents and I went and the lady that was praying for me got John 15 and it talks about abiding in the vine and being a friend of God. She was so sweet. She looked at me all excited with a huge smile on her face and she goes. “God is asking you to be His friend!” I smiled politely but inside I was fuming. I was like Friend? I have enough friends. What do you mean you want to me my friend? You’re supposed to be my bridegroom? You just wanna be my friend? Awesome you’re no different from all the other guys. So needless to say I was not encouraged by this word. God is so funny too because on the drive home, we all popped our tapes in and listened to them in the car, and when we put mine in, it was the only one that didn’t even work. So I just sorta wrote it off because I didn’t like what I heard anyway, but even though the tape didn’t work, it was like He etched John 15 on my heart and I’ve actually never forgotten what she said.

So fast forward a few years, and we come to the past few months, probably since I got back from the missions trip. I wrote a couple of blogs ago about how the Lord was beginning to speak to me about the heart of the judge. So my landlady had Shelley’s class the Heart of the Judge and let me borrow it. I was so excited! I devoured all 20-something classes in less than two weeks right before Christmas. I don’t even know if I can fully articulate what the Lord has been doing in my heart, but each class I would just sit and cry as every single class just continued to touch my heart. I think the most impactful part of all the teaching was when she was talking about being friends with God and what it means and what it looks like. I have never felt more convicted. All I could say was God I’m so sorry! I didn’t understand. I didn’t know that’s what it meant to be your friend. I’m so sorry! Basically it means that God is looking for people who He can be Himself with. He’s looking for friends He can share His secrets and His heart with. He’s looking for people who will just cry with Him because they feel what He feels. He wants people who will just be with Him and who He can just be with. He wants people that He doesn’t have to say wait here while I go over there and pray to. So then the first day of the prophecy class what are the 2 verses that she pulls out from the ghetgo? John 15 and John 17. To which I said ok God I’m listening. The entire class she proceeded to talk about friendship with the Lord and how God is looking for friends. I was just stunned. She opened with John 17:24 which if you remember was the verse the Lord hit me with last year during fitn after Corey’s message and that guy came up at the end and said I feel like the Lord is saying this is the banner over your life.

24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

Then she pulled out John 15, which is exactly the part the lady used when she said God wanted to be my friend.

15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.

However, while the teaching on the heart of the judge totally rocked my world, I have also had quite a bit of offense come up in my heart about what the lives of “friends of God” looked like. My last two years have been the hardest of my life and I feel like God has already asked me to do some hard things and I’m afraid of what else He may ask me to say yes to if I really say yes to being His friend. And I’m coming to see that I’m scared of God because I see Him as a mean taskmaster that once He finds someone who will say yes, He’ll use them to do what He wants them to do because He knows they’re not going to say no. And He knows that I’m going to say yes to whatever He asks me because I have said yes in the past and I’m afraid to disobey.

What I guess it basically comes down to is, I’m in a season of asking what did I really sign up for? The majority of the church begins following Jesus because if you say yes to Him then He will bless you and give you a good life and great things and you will be happy and healthy and everything will be wonderful. In America, for the most part, Christianity is associated with the American Dream. Anyone who knows me knows I’m all about this. Give me the husband, the 2.5 kids, and a precious little house with a white picket fence and I’m happy as a clam. This season pretty much started at the end of the mission trip at the fight conference when they were talking about being missionaries and how we are all called to “go.” Then we got back and our book for the last module of class was called the “Heavenly Man” and it was basically about this Chinese dude and chronicles His life and the very real torture and persecution he endured for the sake of Jesus. Then the last module of class was about the lifestyle of the forerunner and he talked about persecution and even martyrdom. I’ve been scouring the Bible on what it truly means to follow Jesus and what your life looks like when you really follow Him. In a nutshell it means picking up your cross and dying to yourself daily. It means possibly being hated by friends and family, and quite likely persecution in some form or fashion. While I didn’t start following Jesus because of what He could give me or do for me, I’m realizing that I am much more about comfort and convenience and what God can do to bless me than I am about suffering and enduring persecution for His sake. I love the world way more than I realized I did. So I am super excited about this semester, but I am also fully aware that it will probably be a painful semester as the Lord again shows me more of my darkness and yuck and humanism that I like to hide and pretend isn’t in there.

Now before you go thinking wow that sounds miserable, here’s the funniest thing. I am probably the happiest right now that I have ever been my whole life. God is doing some hard stuff in my life and in my heart, but at the same time He is continuously demolishing the lies that I have believed about Him and renewing my mind to the truth of who He is and what He is like. Slowly but surely, the Lord is winning over my heart and causing me to fall more and more and deeper and deeper in love with Him. There’s this integral switch in Song of Solomon where at the beginning the girl is super selfish and it’s all about what she gets from her relationship with Jesus and how much she enjoys Him. She says in 2:16: 16 My beloved is mine, and I am his. It’s all about what she gets first and secondly about what He gets.

Then it switches and all of sudden she goes from the place of He’s her inheritance and it’s all about what she can get from Him and she makes this amazing statement in chapter 7: 10: 10 I am my beloved’s, And his desire is toward me.

Now for the first time she’s not as selfish and she’s beginning to see that it’s not just about what she gets, but it’s really about what Jesus gets. She is His inheritance. She is His prize. She is His reward for His suffering. It’s really funny because I feel like the bride is really far in her journey and pretty mature once she gets to this part, but the more I realize what the Lord is doing in my heart and in my life, I feel like this may be where I am. I am actually beginning to dare to believe that everything that I’ve read in the Bible and heard in all the teachings and in my classes is true, not just for the church corporately, but for me personally and individually. It’s very gradual and I feel like I’m at the very beginning of the beginning but I feel like it’s actually starting to take root in my heart and plant itself there. I told the Lord just the other day that I was going to stop believing the lies and stop accusing Him of being someone He’s not. Starting this semester, I’m going to dare to believe it’s true. I am going to start proclaiming this truth, whether I feel it or not: He desires me. He wants me. I did not choose Him, but He chose me and appointed me that I should go and bear fruit. It’s not about me. It’s about Him and the fact that He wants me. There’s this great chorus on the nightwatch and it goes “You really enjoy me. You really are for me. Finally I believe it. Finally I receive it. I’ll stop trying to control you, I’ll stop trying to resist you. I’ll just let you love me. I’ll just let you love me.” I have officially made it my chorus for this semester.

Oh and this doesn’t really have anything to do with anything else but I am going to get a commentary and I am going to study the book of Deuteronomy this semester. I have never actually studied a book of the Bible before so I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m really excited about it. =)