because i never realized how real the battle was until friday - 2/25/11. on the same day, i witnessed the birth of a specific redemption, a redemption i unknowingly prayed for since age 7.
see it's real because just 24 hours before i went through it, my pastor did too. the EXACT same battle. We looked at one another today and laughed - satan really is that unoriginal..and real.
because on that night, i thought my life was over. i thought i had lost it - full on psychotic break. but God was so much more real in that moment. i thought i saw him. sitting quietly next to me, watching me intently, not letting anything actually touch me although i felt like death was upon me.
but see the closer you are to actually working the works of God, the more intense the battle will get. the more dependent we will become on God. the more we will realize that we are all that close to insanity and death, but for the MERCY of God.
and the mercy of God is SO powerful. I've spent 8 weeks studying it now. Mercy is the most powerful attribute of God - it is the basis of humanity's salvation. Eschatological hope. Research it.
All of our inclinations are actually true: everything is spiritual. everything is a battle. we can be steadfast even if we have emotional ups and downs. growth can be in fact exponential, years of growth can be contracted into weeks, months at God's command. we can be used - the Holy Spirit isn't just for one person - to believe otherwise is actually a sin. 2011 is the year of power.
This is what else: God is light. When His light shines, it really does feel like darkness. Also, it's ok to not know. Most of living a life that makes dents in the universe involves a lot more unknowing and way less control.
Reverent disciplined unknowing.
The reverent part is key. KEY. Reverence means letting go of our own agendas and need for knowing. Letting go of our need for an easy life. Reverence means coming out of our place and going to God's.
There is a time to be fed and wait for God to meet us where we are at, and then there's a time to run with full force toward where God is. Because where He is, there is power. Because where He is, there are miracles. Because where He is, we are truly free.
And get ready. So very ready for the battle. It will NOT end you. But it will end any belief you had that you could do it on your own.
So she prayed about a jewel. She prayed about a well, three steps and light. She prayed about primary water over secondary water for thirst. But most of all she prayed this:
Stay tuned for greatness.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
"All we have is given us"
"The more we look to God, the more our fear deepens, at first. We realize how utterly poor we are. We are utterly dependent on what is given us - life itself. Nothing finally belongs to us; nothing in us is autonomous. All is held in our relationships with other people and with the mysterious source of being. We must see that whatever we have we have in dialogue, in contingency, in connection with others who are beyond us and beyond our ultimate control. Even what is lovable in us depends on someone else's recognizing it and bringing it out in the open.
When we have an inner conviction of this destitution, we see with utmost clarity that sin is refusal of this poverty. Sin's major way of tempting us is through stupidity of heart, the privation of knowledge.
God acts like a parent toward us, loving us, endowing us and at the same time setting us free to find our own resources and responses. The poverty we so fear becomes the entrance to our inner riches: we own nothing, we possess no one. To take this way of poverty wakes us up to the plenitude that daily is given us.
All we have is given us, and given (we will see if we look hard enough) in abundance." - Ulanov, Primary Speech
When we have an inner conviction of this destitution, we see with utmost clarity that sin is refusal of this poverty. Sin's major way of tempting us is through stupidity of heart, the privation of knowledge.
God acts like a parent toward us, loving us, endowing us and at the same time setting us free to find our own resources and responses. The poverty we so fear becomes the entrance to our inner riches: we own nothing, we possess no one. To take this way of poverty wakes us up to the plenitude that daily is given us.
All we have is given us, and given (we will see if we look hard enough) in abundance." - Ulanov, Primary Speech
Saturday, February 12, 2011
But you...
and then there are nights where you will give and give of yourself and it won't be enough.
you try to do the right thing and people will still look at you like you're crazy.
you will be given authority only for that authority to be questioned, maligned, spit at, criticized. most of the time by the people you really trusted. by the people you love the most.
BUT YOU will move forward. you will move forward so much that you will be alone. ALONE.
don't be surprised when you look around and it's just you, holding your staff, wondering...now what?
but you will have loved. you will have served. you will have stayed obedient.
people look at me and think why her? and yet in their heart of hearts KNOW I am for them. i care. without me they couldn't have done it. because I was chosen. I didn't choose.
so i will continue. march forward. not for them. not for you. but because He calls.
it's so lonely. it's so tiring. it's so worth it.
you try to do the right thing and people will still look at you like you're crazy.
you will be given authority only for that authority to be questioned, maligned, spit at, criticized. most of the time by the people you really trusted. by the people you love the most.
BUT YOU will move forward. you will move forward so much that you will be alone. ALONE.
don't be surprised when you look around and it's just you, holding your staff, wondering...now what?
but you will have loved. you will have served. you will have stayed obedient.
people look at me and think why her? and yet in their heart of hearts KNOW I am for them. i care. without me they couldn't have done it. because I was chosen. I didn't choose.
so i will continue. march forward. not for them. not for you. but because He calls.
it's so lonely. it's so tiring. it's so worth it.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Primacy of Prayer
It's been 31 days into this year and already it's yielded so much. SO much.
However, I want to spend the next 334 days and the rest of my life with the following words at the forefront of my existence. It's not new. It's not revolutionary. But it's that important and has been presented so wonderfully in only the 2nd chapter of the book I'm required to read for my Master's degree in nursing from APU.
So here goes, from A Psychology of Prayer: Primary Speech by Ann and Barry Ulanov.
Excerpts from the chapter on prayer and desire:
"God does not need to be told anything about what we need and want. We discover this way what in fact we do desire, what we want to reach out to and love. Thus we come to hold in open awareness what before we had lived unknowingly.
Prayer entered into seriously marks an unmistakable break with the way we have been living. It is never simple another happy little part of our lives, an attractive addition to the day or the night like a new car or a new dress or a fetching new way to prepare a souffle.
Prayer is the place we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow. Desire leads to more desire. And the greatest surprise of all is that the prayer we thought to be our own activity, our own reaching out, reveals itself instead as God's Spirit moving in us. Our curiosity and desire to know, we see, are the force of the knower seeking the known.
One of the immediate effects of paying attention in prayer to our own desires, whatever they may be, is to experience changes in the desires. We feel them opening, steadying, and deepening. We have moments of uprush of desire, of going out of ourselves in acts of impulsive kindness, of a sudden talking to ourselves in ourselves where we divulge what we really think and feel, what really matters to us. In prayer, desires are disciplined, not in the sense of being restricted or held on a tight rein, but rather in the sense of being given their appropriate space. They no longer gush through us and disappear. Instead, they form a consistent flow of reliable good will toward ourselves and others."
It's SO true. So true. We really don't know what we want. But in prayer, it really is sorted out. In prayer, God begins to unearth His desires for our lives. Everything we think we need we actually already have. Seriously. That's true because Jesus' death was NOT the end of the story.
We no longer need to seek God like greedy children. We no longer need to tell Him what He already knows. But as we pray, let us be open to an intense ordering, which may feel like chaos because that's what treasures in jars of clay look like.
We don't really ever initiate anything. God is the initiator of all things. Desires, dreams, passions, callings. We focus much too much on ourselves.
I'll give you an example. For the last 5 years, I've wanted to start a mobile clinic to deliver health care to urban slums in Africa and South Asia.
Today, I want to start a revolution. I want to build hospitals run by the Holy Spirit. I want to change the face of hospitals in America. I want to publish a paper, perhaps even a book, develop a nursing model based on Christ. I want to go to villages yet to be discovered and tell them about the God I serve. And then I want to come back to the West and shame them with the joy and faith I see in those who have nothing.
Three months ago I wanted to get married. Today, I want to get married, but I want to wait for a man that can teach ME something, lead ME. Someone who brings me to my knees in awe because he is that in love with my God, that committed to loving others and that committed to changing nations.
Yes, desires change. They fizzle out as flames and come back as raging fires.
Primacy of prayer. Prayer is the currency through which we handle KINGDOM affairs. You want to start an orphanage, raise some money, sign some papers and do it. It's not that hard.
You want see those orphans become presidents of nations - pray. Pray, wait and submit to a God much bigger than we know.
Pray, not because you are so in need. Neediness is a given, boring, like defecation. Pray because God so desperately wants to break free and enlarge you, equip you, defeat Goliaths through you. Pray because you were created to be in communication with your Maker, just as a car was created to be driven.
Make it the center. You will be unrecognizable. Guaranteed.
However, I want to spend the next 334 days and the rest of my life with the following words at the forefront of my existence. It's not new. It's not revolutionary. But it's that important and has been presented so wonderfully in only the 2nd chapter of the book I'm required to read for my Master's degree in nursing from APU.
So here goes, from A Psychology of Prayer: Primary Speech by Ann and Barry Ulanov.
Excerpts from the chapter on prayer and desire:
"God does not need to be told anything about what we need and want. We discover this way what in fact we do desire, what we want to reach out to and love. Thus we come to hold in open awareness what before we had lived unknowingly.
Prayer entered into seriously marks an unmistakable break with the way we have been living. It is never simple another happy little part of our lives, an attractive addition to the day or the night like a new car or a new dress or a fetching new way to prepare a souffle.
Prayer is the place we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow. Desire leads to more desire. And the greatest surprise of all is that the prayer we thought to be our own activity, our own reaching out, reveals itself instead as God's Spirit moving in us. Our curiosity and desire to know, we see, are the force of the knower seeking the known.
One of the immediate effects of paying attention in prayer to our own desires, whatever they may be, is to experience changes in the desires. We feel them opening, steadying, and deepening. We have moments of uprush of desire, of going out of ourselves in acts of impulsive kindness, of a sudden talking to ourselves in ourselves where we divulge what we really think and feel, what really matters to us. In prayer, desires are disciplined, not in the sense of being restricted or held on a tight rein, but rather in the sense of being given their appropriate space. They no longer gush through us and disappear. Instead, they form a consistent flow of reliable good will toward ourselves and others."
It's SO true. So true. We really don't know what we want. But in prayer, it really is sorted out. In prayer, God begins to unearth His desires for our lives. Everything we think we need we actually already have. Seriously. That's true because Jesus' death was NOT the end of the story.
We no longer need to seek God like greedy children. We no longer need to tell Him what He already knows. But as we pray, let us be open to an intense ordering, which may feel like chaos because that's what treasures in jars of clay look like.
We don't really ever initiate anything. God is the initiator of all things. Desires, dreams, passions, callings. We focus much too much on ourselves.
I'll give you an example. For the last 5 years, I've wanted to start a mobile clinic to deliver health care to urban slums in Africa and South Asia.
Today, I want to start a revolution. I want to build hospitals run by the Holy Spirit. I want to change the face of hospitals in America. I want to publish a paper, perhaps even a book, develop a nursing model based on Christ. I want to go to villages yet to be discovered and tell them about the God I serve. And then I want to come back to the West and shame them with the joy and faith I see in those who have nothing.
Three months ago I wanted to get married. Today, I want to get married, but I want to wait for a man that can teach ME something, lead ME. Someone who brings me to my knees in awe because he is that in love with my God, that committed to loving others and that committed to changing nations.
Yes, desires change. They fizzle out as flames and come back as raging fires.
Primacy of prayer. Prayer is the currency through which we handle KINGDOM affairs. You want to start an orphanage, raise some money, sign some papers and do it. It's not that hard.
You want see those orphans become presidents of nations - pray. Pray, wait and submit to a God much bigger than we know.
Pray, not because you are so in need. Neediness is a given, boring, like defecation. Pray because God so desperately wants to break free and enlarge you, equip you, defeat Goliaths through you. Pray because you were created to be in communication with your Maker, just as a car was created to be driven.
Make it the center. You will be unrecognizable. Guaranteed.
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