Monday, December 7, 2009

Disciple...O the grace needed and poured down on us!

My reading took me to Jesus talking in Luke about being a disciple...I began crying and decided to even go out onto my steps. I remembered a momment when I arrived in Nashville that will forever be etched in my mind as a vivid picture of His grace to me. I began waitressing when I arrived from L.A. to the Nashville scene. I knew that He had laid on my heart to pursue speaking and singing but I had no earthly idea how to start other than to seek after Him in His Word like I never had before. This particular night (in accordance with my overkill work-ethic that He's been progressively changing for sure), I had worked another double - it was around 2AM and winter outside. I remember pulling up in my gravel steep driveway after asking God what I was doing in life and opening my door only to have my ankle slammed by the door. I cried and asked God why, then decided to try again. As soon as my feet hit driveway the ice took me for a ride landing me scrapped, bleeding, tired, freezing and at my end. I began crying outloud, "Lord, I don't understand what you are doing! I'm staying outside until You tell me!" I did so...but He was already willing to talk as I wept on the front stairs. There was no audible voice, but I felt His Spirit clearly say to my heart something like this: "Amy, I could have taken three years to humble you, but I've chosen to instead cram some of it into three months." He knew! He knew that my desire was to get through whatever was holding me back from Him and His plan fast, even if it was more painful to do so! This pain was being used for His purpose...I felt at that momment like I had been washed in His grace! He didn't have to use me, do anything in me, or even care...yet He cared enough to work on me and to do it in a shortened more intense format! Praise His NAME...the one who "paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead!"(loving that version of Jesus Paid It All!)
So this morning, I went out again in like suit....broken over the verses that I'm going to leave you to read.. Luke 14:25-35. What is there that I could ever want more than to go deeper and further with Him...TO KNOW HIM MORE? What in me am I believing that is untrue of Him...what is keeping me from giving more of my all (I think that depth grows as we're willing and actively taking obedience by the "horns" and taking steps to give ourselves away...our depth grows too somehow - just works that way.) I love Him...but due to the fact that my heart has glimpsed light that there's more to be known of Him...I have no desire to stay here when I know there's deeper to go in Him. My craving is not to see me change, for I know that will come as an "after-effect" of having noticed more of His glory we speak of as if we have any idea that we know what we're talking about. Oh, the grace of our God and King! I don't want to be satisfied...I want to be so ravished with sustaining and provoking hunger that I cannot but be drawn closer to this light of LIFE....

To live fully is to live having died