Lord God Merciful

December 16, 2013


Today I am officially finished with my 1^st semester of my SENIOR year! What in the world? Can you believe how fast this past 4 years has gone? This quarter has been absolutely amazing. There is a lady here who wrote a children’s book called “The Thankables.” It is all about being grateful and thankful and not grumbling or complaining. She challenged our church body to 40 days of making war on grumbling. Here’s the video. It’s never too late to start!

http://www.thethankables.com/join-war-on-grumbling/

Y’all I am not exaggerating when I say it is truly changing my life. Grumbling and complaining is deadly. You really can speak death over yourself instead of life. I have been internally doing this war on grumbling and I have seen such a difference in my prayer life. Instead of arguing and complaining about how He’s doing it wrong and how actually His leadership isn’t really perfect, I have turned it into prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude for what He is doing and focusing on what He is doing instead of what He’s not. Turns out He’s doing a lot more than I had realized before!

Since this is my senior year, I have really been reflecting on my time in school and just how different I am now than I was when I first moved to Kansas City. I’ve especially been thinking about the nightwatch. I was remembering how after first semester I had the opportunity to switch and how I almost didn’t because I was afraid I would miss out on relationships with the people in my class. Now looking back I can’t imagine what my life would look like had I NOT switched to nights. I have the most amazing relationships with people I probably wouldn’t be as close to had I chosen to stay on days. Plus I LOVE the sweetness of nights. I don’t even want to think about what I could have missed out on if I had let the fear of missing out win. I am so excited to finish out my final semester in the watches of the night. The Lord really seems to be highlighting the necessity of day and night prayer and it sounds as though there will be many students switching to nightwatch next semester. I am looking forward to January to see who all will be joining us in the night.

This quarter my James class absolutely rocked my world. I think it may have been my favorite after all. We had to write a reflection about how our prayer life changed from what we learned in the class. Here is a bit of my reflection that I turned in. I feel like it summarizes what God has been doing in my heart:

I think the first thing that has been transformational in changing my prayer life has been to see God as a God who delights in mercy. These past 3 years at IHOPU have been a time for me of dismantling wrong ideas about God and His character. Before I came for fire in the night I thought that God was really mad at me and punishing me for a certain relationship in my life. Although my boyfriend at the time was the one that in my mind treated me badly, when God told us we had to break up, instead of judging him for how he treated my heart, God not only showed him mercy, but actually blessed him. He did not appear to be doing that to me and it actually seemed like I was getting the raw end of the deal. So it’s a journey God and I have been working on over these past few years. Last semester we had the book of Isaiah and my main take away from the class was how merciful God is. It really broke down a lot of my ideas of a harsh God. You just can’t see that when you really look at how He treats Israel. He is merciful unlike we have ever known or even have a grid for. So then coming from that class last quarter to this one and Minor Prophets at the same time, the theme this semester that God has been screaming to me is, “Amy I’m merciful!” It’s all over James and the all throughout the prophets. It has changed everything about my prayer life. I’m not praying to a God who is mostly mad and frustrated with me because I keep failing. I am talking to my sympathetic high priest who knows my frame, knows every detail of my life and what has made me the way I am today. He knows my weakness and even though I am frustrated with myself when I blow it, He is not. I have even begun to see especially over the last couple of years how God ending that relationship was very much His mercy to me on so many levels. His perfect leadership is always seen in hindsight. He desires that we learn mercy, which means He gives us opportunities to do just that. As I was reading through the book of Jonah, I was struck that Jonah actually got mad at God because He was merciful towards someone that Jonah didn’t think was deserving of mercy. I realized that has been my attitude towards God in my own situation. But I can’t be mad that God showed him mercy. I deserve hell but God has given me mercy. When you remember the truth through that lens it changes everything, and it literally has changed everything this semester.

I think the most impactful thing God was teaching me this semester came through the book of Hosea. It touched me when I read the notes but then when he hit on it in class it touched me even more. The basic premise is Hosea is a picture of God and His relationship with Israel. Israel is represented by Hosea’s wife Gomer. Before they were married, she was a prostitute and even though Hosea loves her better than anyone ever has, she continues to run back to her other lovers. She gets sold into slavery by another man and her husband Hosea buys her back! This was the part of the notes that got me:

“He will not be intimate with her immediately nor will he fully exercise the authority of his “title” as a husband – because she is too tender and weak at the beginning stages of her “deliverance” from the other lover.  Gomer still cannot make the distinction between “husband” and “master” and thus is not able to rightly interpret even the intimacy of Hosea rightly.  Thus he withholds intimacy to give her time to trust him with deep confidence and understanding.  She must be gently and tenderly brought to the place of intimacy without shame, or intimacy rightly received – not as a possession to be used but as a friend to be enjoyed.”

When I read the notes and heard this in class I just had tears streaming down my face as I realized this is what God has been doing with me. What I have perceived as rejection and a sign that God doesn’t really desire me, is actually His plan to get my heart to a place where it can actually receive His love. Oh I pray that more breakthrough is coming!

Onething is coming up and I am going to be helping with CEC again this year. They are doing things a little differently and instead of having all the kids all together in one room they are breaking them up by ages. I have been recruited to work with the 10-12 year olds. I’m kind of nervous because I am used to doing 5-7 year olds and this will be completely out of my comfort zone, but I am really looking forward to seeing how God meets me in my weakness. I am going to be going on another ministry trip in the spring and this year I will be going to Cincinnati, Ohio. And I know a lot of you are already asking me what I’m going to be doing when I graduate. I don’t have much information as this is a very new development (meaning I’ve only known since the week before Thanksgiving) but here's a little teaser for you. I have an opportunity to move to New Zealand for up to a year after graduation for my senior capstone! Looks like I heard rightly about getting a passport. More details to come on both trips as they get closer!