Wow! What a week. We went to the Boardwalk Chapel, and big things happened. Being around fellow coals (those on fire for the Lord!), hearing about devoted and desperate prayer and evangelism, and having an intense conversation with our friend Akira about Japan has driven us to somewhere awesome. Isaiah has quickly reverted back to that extreme, zealous man I fell in love with, and I have regained a vision and bravery that I haven't had since high school and college. I am starting to listen more to those things, those dreams, that the grown-ups of this world call "too big" or "too intense," and I am elated. I've always been a visionary. I'm only now starting to listen to the fully-orbed concepts placed on my heart and spirit, and allow them to drive me to my knees. Who knows if God will use us to accomplish such things? But who says that He won't or can't? ...Only the world or those who put their eggs in the basket of it.
So, I will stop limiting God and limiting myself. I will stop trying to listen to culture and sometimes the church in it and slow down, chill out, or settle. I will ache and dream and feel big things too large for my soul to hold because I serve a great God. If I go straight to my face in prayer when I feel or envision these things, there is no negative side. God will show me his will. I don't need to be afraid of changing a God who doesn't change like shifting shadows, and I don't have to be afraid of not living up to what I fear I won't be...Since I am God's child, I've already accomplished the only thing that matters anyway (submitting to Christ!), so why should I be discouraged if I don't end fulfilling the big things that drive me to prayer. I only need to pray, seek holiness, and share the gospel with others. The rest is up to God, so there is no pressure. I just pursue Christ and his heart. He does the rest. He answers the prayers, he gives the holiness, and he sends the spirit. Why have I been taking God's job? No wonder I've felt like my dreams are too big. They're not up to me. What is up to me is taking them before the Father and pleading with Him to help them come to fruition for the sake of His Glory and the Nations.
Isaiah and I are having prayer for our next steps in the Spirit this Saturday. We don't know exactly what God is doing. We entered the week of the Boardwalk feeling excited but fairly settled in our lives and plans. We exited the week of the Boardwalk feeling elated and on fire and with inklings and hints of what God has in mind....inklings that are a lot different than what we thought. We are no longer settled at all, and we're actually happy about it! We are planning to bring these inklings before the Lord and see what he says. If you'd like to join us in fasting and prayer this Saturday, please do!
I know that God is doing some awesome things because satan tried to attack me so hard core yesterday. Members of my family, unintentionally but aggressively, kept trying to force me to re-drop my eggs back into the basket of the world. I was berated by more than one person in very tender areas, like me not working at the moment and not being successful. (The irony is, I am the most successful I've ever been right now spiritually, which is all that actually matters in this world! Wow, the world's barometer sucks. haha!) I exited the day feeling stabbed in multiple spots.
In addition, the shooting at Pulse really affected me, as it did most I'm sure. It's hard to even explain all of the emotions involved. At first, my heart just broke in general. Then, I thought an old and very close student of mine may have been there because he had a picture of himself in what I thought was DisneyWorld, hadn't posted in two days, and was the same age of the youngest killed. He also would have gone to a club like Pulse. When I checked Facebook, I realized that he was in Disneyland in California, but alas, my heart had already tumbled over twice. I thought about how I would have felt if he had died, and I hadn't talked to him more about God and life and eternity. I hadn't been brave with him, and I knew it (sure I have excuses like he said he went to church, but I know these were simply reasons for me to not share more). Already in a tumultuous state (as I should have been!), I scrolled through Facebook, and to my horror, the church and the world were responding so badly. Blaming it on lack of gun control, blaming it on general hatred attached to religion (Christianity included), blaming it on non-tolerance of the gay lifestyle, and trying to make sure that we understood not to condemn Islam because of one shooting. I understand the need to explain and put the blame somewhere, but this was just too much.
To be honest, and forewarning, I realize that if I put this on social media, I'd likely be called a bigot who judges, but the thing that broke my heart the most about all of this is the fact that most of those 50 people probably went to hell. They most likely weren't making Christ number 1. I wanted to help, I ached to pray something, but felt so helpless because those killed were already dead, God had already determined where they went. I couldn't resurrect them. I couldn't go to Florida and tell the gospel. Why hadn't I evangelized in Florida!? It was over. What could I pray? Because I didn't know what to pray all day, because I was aching that 50 people had died and probably were condemned eternally, and because the church and the world were saying "this is why we just need to accept LGBT lifestyle and not judge." Because of all these things, I didn't pray.
I felt like I was on sensory overload and couldn't take it. These deaths shouldn't drive us to condone sin. They are what should motivate us to share the gospel of Jesus Christ! These deaths are what should get the church moving to love more, serve more, do more, and also tell people the truth; the truth that we're all screwed up, that living out a gay lifestyle is sinful, but that it's only the symptom of a bigger problem, we have bad hearts which deny our creator and affirm our own desires. We want to be number 1, but we will always be number 2 because we did not create ourselves. These deaths should make us hit our knees and grieve and cry and wail because these were people made in the image of God who were killed; these deaths should drive us to pray for revival, so that more people come to know Christ before they die.
So, all day I had an intolerable burden for the 50 in Florida and the LGBT across the nation and for the church to be in the Word. And all day long, because I was confused and didn't know how or what to pray, I didn't. All day long, people kept trying to have me care about such small things like one family member's drama with another, or the fact that I don't do furniture arranging properly, and all day long I just wanted to weep. Weep for the lives lost. Weep for the lack of the gospel in their lives and in this nation. Weep for the church. Weep and cry out for revival.
And then...finally...an amazing thing happened. Isaiah came home, and we watched a David Platt sermon on Desperate Prayer, and I lost it. My intolerable burden was given words! I prayed! I cried. I told God I didn't know what to ask or say or to feel, but that I cared. And I realized in that moment that all the fire that I had gotten from the Boardwalk this past week, all the dreams and visions I was starting to allow and affirm, all of those things felt like poison all day because I had an intolerable burden that I wasn't releasing. satan was trying to burn out my fire with both the vapidness of the world and with the pain of the world too, to make me feel like I could do nothing, and that those ideas and plans were nothing as well because they would never happen. he wanted me to feel and know that I could do nothing, and then to quit.
But satan forgot one thing. When we, as Christians, feel we can't do something or say something or can't bring something to fruition, that is the time when we are most powerful because that is when we stop trusting in ourselves, hit our faces, and cry out to the God who is waiting for us to ask of Him. I am so grateful for desperate prayers for holiness and for souls. I am so grateful for our time at the Boardwalk. I'm ready to MOVE. I'm ready to GO. I'm ready to HIT MY FACE on the daily. Let's do it, church. Let's do it. Let's cry out to the God we have forgotten. He is the only hope of the world.
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