Bothered: A Post About Oneword 365

Choosing the word Burn for one of my Onewords (yes, have two this year) has proven to be well, ... bothersome.  In a good way, of course.

Why?

Because, wanting to burn, wanting that fire, means I put myself square in the Holy Spirit's cross-hairs.  It is a hot and refining fire.  I'm seeing all of my small compromises.  Oh...no they aren't a BIG deal.  Except they reveal all the little ways I choose to listen to someone or something other than God.

Remembering Jesus' words recorded in Matthew:  When we are faithful with the little, God will give us more.  If I want more, I have to be faithful in the little.

Add on top of this my pastor provoking the church to pray big and then engage with the world around us.  See, I'm good with praying, but fear most of the time keeps me from being the messenger I am called to be.  In essence I hide in prayer instead of praying for God to work and then joining Jesus in working. 

I am so convicted of my own selfishness and pride.  

I hear Jesus calling me to join in His joy by joining Him in the harvest and I'm waving Him off, "I'm praying for workers, Jesus, don't You see?"

"So come speak, come work with Me."

But I don't want to go because, I can feel the darkness in me.  The laziness, the indifference.  So to burn, to be refined AS I pray and cooperate with Jesus.  In the action, He will break the fear, He will break my willingness to choose compromise instead of obedience.

And I will know Him.  I will burn for Him.

The Prayers I Pray

And the answers God gives.

Prayer for an undivided heart....answered with singleness.

Prayer for being in the heart of the city...answered with a request that I move out of my current (free) living situation and finding an apartment literally in the middle of the city.

Prayer for His Kingdom to increase.. answered in being sent into new schools each week where I encounter the greater need of this city to come under His perfect leadership.

Prayer for my family to grow in Jesus...answered with difficult circumstances where Jesus is the Only Thing not shaking.

Prayer for financial provision...answered with two consistent part-time jobs.

Prayer for community...answered with covenant friends, those with whom life is shared, exhortation spoken, and prayer given.

Prayer for the house of prayer to develop in this city and state...answered with the word to watch and wait.


Never unanswered prayers.  My God hears.  My God knows my heart.  He is good and His leadership is perfect.

Jesus, Your kingdom come, Your will be done... Amen

The Voice

Do we share tears with God?  Do we mourn over the things that break God's heart?  Are we friends of God?

I'm asking these questions as I slowly read through Jeremiah.  His accounts are heart-wrenching!  The things that God compares Judah to as His heart breaks over their idolatry and cold-heartedness are hard to stomach.  

Jeremiah pleads the cause of Israel.

And God tells him to stop or He might actually relent.

God shares His heart with Jeremiah.

And Jeremiah understands the fierce, jealous love that God has for His people.

I read recently that in those chapters it is hard to distinguish God's tears from Jeremiah's.  Jeremiah was a voice in his generation to declare the word of God.  Every loving word, even words that spoke of judgement if the people refused to turn to the Lord.  Jeremiah loved God and he loved his fellow countrymen.  He couldn't NOT speak these words.  Even when that made Him a target of scorn.

Most of the people wanted to hear the words that "prophets" not sent by God speaking, "Peace, peace." even when there was no peace, because the people refused to repent.  They didn't obey the first commandment.  They did not love God with all of their hearts and obey Him.  

I see the parallels of the sins of Israel in my generation.  We do nothing to lift the burdens of the oppressed and weak.  In fact, far too often our choices oppress the very ones God calls us to lift up.  We refuse to seek and know the heart of God.  We refuse to be the friends of God.  The one's He can share His heart with and work along side.

My Lord...let me be Your friend.  I want to know Your heart.

The definition of...

Far to easily satisfied by immediacy and having just enough.

What I fail to understand is how fragile man-made eggshells around life are.  I can place everything just so, justifying the pain and the darkness to make it bearable, but it is ever irritating and uncomfortable.  And I'm not whole.

But when the fullness is actually offered and I pretend that less than that is okay...

The words delusional and insane come to mind.

Mishmash

I am such a mishmash of emotions today.  I love it and hate it. (Has anyone else noticed in posts that I have this weird tension with extremes?  No?  Okay moving on.)

The weekend: ah work, a sweet reunion, anticipation and a revelation that is making me go, "Wha?"

I'm slowly adjusting to working the night shift 3 days a week.  I like the job even for the chaos that happens when the nurses all come down at once for break, the phone is ringing for patient orders and the one other person working is on break... that's beside the point.  I never thought I would ever work nights and I dreaded the 20 minute drive back home at 3 am but there is a calm about the city that time of night, yet I also feel the energy of the Holy Spirit hovering in the hours of predawn, like He's pulsing to reign in the night where darkness usually reigns, and yet is also preparing the new mercies and joy of the morning for the majority of the world that is actually sleeping.  Sweet moments.

Speaking of sweet.  My dear aunt flew into my city to see her brother who was in the hospital.  The family had been called in to say goodbyes.  I haven't seen her in almost two years, but this dear woman was the fill in grandma when I was born prematurely, and I can now understand is also a spiritual mother.  We caught up and while I was there found out that her brother who they were expecting to die, might possibly go home later this week.

I am anticipating what February holds.  It's a leap year and sitting in church yesterday, God spoke to my heart about going after a specific area in my life with Him in February.  It's going to be an adventure for sure.  I'm sure I'll post something about it after, but for now I'm letting it settle privately in my own heart.

And as far as the revelation, yesterday was sanctity of life Sunday.  We prayed in church, like we do every Sunday for the blessing of the many babies and children in our church and we also prayed that there would be culture and spirit of Life in our church.  I was moved as we prayed and the little one in the row in front of me kept staring at me.  God knew these little ones before they were ever formed as Psalm 139 says.  Then later in the day I was chatting with my mom and she told me something I never knew before.  I was conceived while she was on the pill.  This revelation about knocked me over.  While, my parents weren't expecting me to come around, God had these plans so that I would be born at that specific time.  It was one of those "wow" moments  where I knew in a deeper way that God formed me and purposed me and He made no mistakes and I was no "accident."  This also combined with sadness as I also found out that my mom had 4 miscarriages before my brother and I came along.  I couldn't help thinking "what if?" about those four lives.

Ah...the life of seeking after the heart of God.  Rich and full.

Love and Fear

Fear and Love.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might...It is the Lord your God you shall fear...  Deuteronomy 6:4,13.

For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.  You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.  Deuteronomy 13:3-4

Two examples reveal a truth that run though out the Bible.  Loving God and Fearing God go hand in hand.  They are irreversibly linked.

I know too the verses from 1 John:  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

How are the two reconciled?  How do I make sense of the relationship of love and fear?

The questions show something of my knowledge of God.  Or in reality my lack of knowledge.

God is awesome, not the light hearted "hey you got a new ipad, awesome."  No this awesome is about something that is indescribably bigger, stronger, holier, completely beyond me. 

I fear Him because He is great.  And part of that fear, the knowledge is of His fiercely, jealous love.  Jesus wants my heart alone.  If something or if I let someone or something else take the first place in my heart, Jesus is going to go after that.

I'm just in the beginning of the beginning of knowing what it means to fear the Lord. But I am convinced that as I learn the fear of the Lord, I am going to love Him more.

Awake

Shaking off sleep, I wander down to the kitchen for my body's motivator to be awake: coffee.

A whole new schedule, a whole new daily routine.  Spending many hours that used to be consumed by sleep are now filled with labor to make ends meet.  Shift work that causes a shift in lifestyle.

And yet as my body rouses, my spirit is already awake.  Thoughts of the One that has awakened my soul.  Jesus consumes my every waking hour and even the night with dreams, time that used to be consumed by compromise and endless distractions.

A shift of life awakened to the Lord, Yahweh, where nothing is untouched by Him.  And I am awake, without the grogginess.

 

Five minutes of unedited (and in this case sleep deprived) writing.  Join others at The Gypsy Mama as they write about: Awake.