What I learned about myself this morning...

I admit that struggled to concentrate through an amazing time with the Body of Christ at Chicago Tabernacle yesterday morning. It was as though there was a battle going on in my heart and my mind keeping me from being where I was. It felt intangible and something I couldn't fight because I couldn't put my hands around it and throw it out. I prayed and made a decision to struggle through it - to just not face it and yet praise Him with them. It's much easier to lay down before Him than to try to fight the battle first. :)

Then this morning, I awoke earlier than my body wanted to and found myself struggling through what I wanted to do for my family and how I was going to finish all the work I had to do while here at the conference...yes, even though I was at a conference to learn and grow my to-do list was still by my side. After writing my heart down into words in my weary journal, I felt the Lord told me to kneel. It was as if He had chiropractic work to do on my heart and was telling me the position I needed to be in so that He could fix me.

As quickly as I knelt (which doesn't always happen), He began to show me that I was thinking of myself and not others...even in my wanting to serve my sisters and brother while here in Chicago for a week. I wanted to do for them what needed to be done instead of what they might have wanted. Like getting socks for Christmas or a broom for my birthday...I was giving them what I thought they needed instead of being to them what they may have wanted. I hadn't yet lived this out, but little did they know how much I had already planned in the one full day of being here - I was determined to accomplish...cleaning, cooking, filling the freezer with meals, switching an office for a bedroom while they were at work (and the conference had yet to begun)...things that they had mentioned or I thought would help them excel further! WHAT? Yes, I was planning this and feeling a pressure like I could never just sit down and work...I had a team forming back home that needed my attention, tours that needed to be worked out and prayed over. Is no one else this busy? Does anyone understand me and the weight that "God" has placed on me? It was as if deep down inside everything (even and especially people) were becoming something keeping me from the discipline, service, and seeking after Jesus that I longed for. I feel most fulfilled when I'm reading, writing, studying the Word, disciplining myself, keeping my life organized and purposeful the way I want it.

YET, I had watched God work in me over the past couple of years a wonderful freedom to be (at least much more) where I was and with the people while I was with them. The struggle had been pushed much deeper...people couldn't see the struggle much any more because I had gotten really good at not believing it was there myself! Till this morning...God had something else to tell me too..."I'm just as pleased with the unfocused time! (or what I saw as that...not focused on what I wanted to like a task-master control myself to be focused on)" To me, my life had become one or the other...Times where I was doing what I thought disciplined life looked like and times when others were keeping me from doing that! Those were the two categories in my life...and due to the growth in my walk and life I had seen through the growth He had brought me through (discipline being a huge lesson), I craved more of the discipline. My new drug of choice..."DOING"...once again I had been drawn back to it's lulling coo. I no longer felt my worth in what I was doing, rather I had begun to (subtle) find my satisfaction and contentment in being able to be more disciplined and anything keeping me from that was becoming a frustration. There were certain tasks God's given me and will lay on my heart throughout a day...goals that must be reached and others that depend on me for things I must deliver. BUT, when it comes to my life and focus...it must be on Him alone...not even on me editing my way through seeking after Him. Lord, You lead me.

Forgivenness is on CENTER stage this morning...

I am not always good at follow through even though I pride myself in being a woman of my word. I do the things I don’t need to do and the things I don’t need to do I finish before needed! (Just an addition to the cry of Paul said not an omission, I assure you.) I feel like I'm in one of those dreams at times when I want to run and can't move even my arm! Because of my failure in this, people are left in the dust when they would have been coming with me in closer detail! The masterpiece of the body is not realized in my life-work as it could be because I'm not following through - that's how serious this is. Those same "others" can’t even help if I don’t finish and give them what’s needed to do so. I feel a need to defend myself, but for the sake of seeing my sin (however small or large when compared to "others") as it really is before Him and compared to Him and the power that I have at my finger tips to do what's right…I refrain from trying to speak in my defense any further. I am guilty as charged. I don’t want to become the focus of this segment….there’s something much more worthy. His forgiveness takes center stage...His presence has entered the courtroom.

If I were to replay the tape from this morning, you would have heard my confession to the Lord…it's emission was ugly. But what happened next was beautiful and amidst the rubble and destruction so evident of my life, I stood in the middle bleeding from the shrapnel of my self-detinated habitual bombshell (hitting many more than me) failures, but unscathed it seemed in my heart. Why? Forgiveness,like a modern day Calvary arrived and infiltrated the lies of the enemy like penetrating light illuminating, healing, and disintegrating the guilt that had been dehibilitating me from within.

The truth about forgiveness is that I get a new beginning even when everything is not figured out and things aren’t yet finished or fixed. I get a new beginning in my heart. I’m healed and starting in the same outside muck but I’m not clogged with muck on the inside anymore! I am healed and forgiven – seen as clean and able with His strength. BECAUSE I trust Him…. “Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence. For the king trusts in the LORD; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.” (Psa. 21:6-7) If I’m trusting in You then I won’t be feeling unforgiven or the same after I have asked forgiveness…I won’t be looking at the muck, I’ll be looking at You and finding joy in Your presence!

Oh the thought that You would avail Your presence to me – SUCH a failing sinner! I could name my short-comings (in comparison with You) for the rest of my days and still not be finished. Yet, You choose to give me the opprortunity and plead with me through the reality reminder...a vivid "memory" of the agony of the most cruel death in all of history that I might live in the forgiveness wrought through it! What LOVE! What GRACE! Why would...how COULD I bare to deny availing myself of your forgiveness that You gave Your life to put before me. I’m still standing in the midst of failing, of past regrets, and still more unfinished work...it all has the potential to take years to overhaul, make right, and finish and yet You offer me forgiveness NOW!

LORD, this is my prayer….that I will see Your victory (that You’ve endowed to me) instead of my failures. That I will instead be overwhelmed with what gives me life instead of what is trying to pull me away and distract me from the WAY the TRUTH and the LIFE. I ask You to forgive me for not following through with what I know to do, and for doing what I don’t know is needed instead of facing the bullet of what I really need to do. Let me realize that I’m indestructible when You and Your forgiveness is at hand. I can never crumble inside if Your presence is there to hold me up. Your forgiveness is the bedrock of my stable existence…that I can know You….what could withstand that force?
Father You are good...Take over, Lord!

Gripped by the reality of this thing (action) called prayer...

Sometimes prayers are all the good that I feel comes out of my mouth, for it’s then that I’m truly me without trying to please anyone. I have chosen to pray and therefore trust the God (who’s Son is Jesus) who cannot be wooed by my words to believe anything about me that isn’t truth. Funny, somehow, I can usually only remember long-term the words that I pray when I really was speaking to Him and meant it! These are the prayers I’m talking about now. I somehow remember the prayers that I’m expecting in faith…watching and waiting on Him to answer as His will decrees. They are brought back to memory when I begin to be concerned and need to pray them again. I find sweet comfort in trusting Him to do what I’m choosing to lay before Him trusting Him to accomplish…Circular reasoning? Yes, and in this case, it works.

The world could be changed by the prayers of those who know Him. If I were to think of what a prayer would look like, I would picture a wind of change…you can never control when it comes or predict with confidence the direction from which it will come. But, when it comes, there’s no denying that a power much greater than your own – curiously personal, mysterious and powerful - came and moved things most times in great ways, sometimes in “just what we needed” undeserved ways. Even if we had all the resources in the world at our fingertips, we couldn’t cause the likes of blessings only God can bring on the wings of His grace…even if we tried for a lifetime. We would try in vain to make happen the likes of what we could dare to request on our knees. He’s wanting to answer – He’s just waiting for us to make time to re-align our hearts in order that we may ask just in time to catch the eclipse of His glory passing by our lives through His answer. In our struggles may our faith may be proved genuine – resulting in praise glory and honor… I Peter 1.

Cruel honesty about my prayer life...

Jan. 19th, 2010
How do people really pray through everything in their life? Not that I’ve never made an effort, but I’ve never figured out a sure-proof system to keep an updated list (most times I don’t even make space in my day to jot one down at all!) I dreadfully regret to admit (even to myself) the amount of time I actually spend in heart-prepared “believing” prayers which stream through the delights of faith…though I plead my love with the jury of His questioning (like Peter, “Do you love me?”) I regret all the missed opportunity to come before the Maker of Heaven and Earth and watch Him do what there is no way I could try a lifetime to accomplish. Oh, but yet I try…I find myself so busy trying that I don’t really enjoy taking the time to seek after what He would do or have me to do. How rarely do I pray specifically, except at crucial times when
*I know I really want to not be in the way of Him getting the glory;
*times when I have been asked by someone and, like Elisha (II Kings right after Elijah dies), am “too ashamed to refuse” and really know I have the time;
*and times when others allow me to join in with them as we take a journey of prayer at a certain time and place?
The truth is, if I feel like I’m doing something (like something will be affected at all if I do), then, I’ll pray. Yet, I do say I believe that prayer does something and I really do with all my heart believe that! So, what is the holdback from doing whatever He says to do in order that I may watch His power stream through my life on a continual basis? If I was, like the woman who in II Kings 4, literally a widow who was about to lose my sons to be the slaves of a creditor, I would do whatever I was told by the man of God. We read that she just tells Elisha her problem – when Elisha says, “What can I do for you?” there is no response – she didn’t know. Elisha then asked her what she had in the house, and she told him that she had nothing except a little oil. Elisha, the man of God, then told her to go to all of her neighbors and ask for their empty jars and made it clear not to ask for only a few! What? She was supposed to do something that made no sense until it was explained that she would then fill them all with oil. She did so, and God did as He had said through Elisha. I’ve always wondered if she lived with “should-haves” the rest of her life? “I should have gone to that neighbor too!” “I should have gotten on the ram’s horn and told the whole city to bring me their jars – then the oil wouldn’t have stopped and the whole nation could have had oil and financial prosperity for our entire lifetime!” Yet, I, when faced with whether I will obey and ask, don’t even go get the jars. I don’t even trust Him, feel I need Him enough, to make me come before Him expectant. Truth is, if it were jars I was told to lay before Him, I would probably jump to my feet faster than I fall to my knees….Because that would be action. Somehow something with me has been lost in translation. The difference is that we would rather do the action than watch God do what only He can! Instead He wants us laying before Him trusting that He is going to answer as He said and waiting for Him to do so – to provide as He promised He would.
Obviously, I guess that’s why I feel that overall (bar those extreme moments braced with His reality) I am living a life overall with only short blasts of that power and no continued airflow. I long for a continuous cycle….and yet I’m unwilling to turn the heater on auto. How? By allowing Him to do in me as He wills without any changing of the temperature when I’m fearful of it costing too much. How to keep a list? I don’t think that’s the question…it’s more that I need to be living in prayer so that there’s no need for a list….the prayers are answered as I pray them – I consider them done unless God recycles those prayers through my life…return air so that I may have breath again to trust Him again. There’s one difference in this illustration….The heat of His presence and constant blowing through our lives never dries out the thin skin of our resolve but only rejuvenates and restores, heals and cleans…prepares somehow for more of His work in and through our lives that we will not have time to watch for we will be so consumed with the passion that He’s already brought to notice what He’s doing through that heat. Without realizing we’ll be consumed and won’t even have tried….we instead just persevered.

I can no longer live without knowing and seeing with my own eyes what He could do dare I ask…and I thought I loved and trusted Him before! ☺ Father God, shake us to the core with the reality that lies before us…and allow us to then do something about it however feeble our response may seem….at least it’s responding – you can work with that.

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

Christmas Season - Loving it!

Last night we had a Christmas party at the house...It was everything beyond what a movie can allow you to experience...the prayer where everyone focuses on Jesus and makes a commitment to continue the journey, the warmth of love, the taste of food, the smell of nothing burnt, the sound of laughter and deep conversation and even carols being sung by a seeming choir (we are in Nashville folks)...it was precious, homey, and memorable for sure. Money tight, I began to go around the house looking for things I could create Christmas decor around...It was as if I found the most randomly placed decorations everywhere I looked. I spent a total of $17 and the house and yard seemed to envelope us all with the crisp freshness and warmth of the season! Well, at least I enjoyed it! I'm so thankful - no decoration is a need, so I was delighted to be surrounded by wants fulfilled! :)

I couldn't help but think of my friends in China who could care less about the decor but had a neccesary, "simplified from underground", acute awareness of what the world seemed to look like outside our doors. I pray for that more and more...I can't ignore what I've seen and heard. What would happen if we were to all seek Him...and His power were to be working in and through us this season...wherever He had us.

What a year this 2009 has turned out to be! Thought.

To say that this year has been unexpected and full would be an understatement. I have definately had years where I've been away more, but in regards to overall "fullness" of a year...this one has been packed: personal change and extreme growth, rooting at "home" all over again, extreme experiences, tours, decisions, watching God move in power to bring people along in the ministry, heart tenderizing and refreshing, hunger and therefore discipline strength, and travel! One thing that has not grown has been my blogging consistency! :) Truthfully, I would rather live and grow..than talk about what I've already lived and been taught. But, I also feel compelled to tell somewhere in that mix...Never have we had a time in history where the portals for change through communication have been so wide open. Praise the LORD....How could we not seize the day? Carpe Diem! Lord, please teach us how to align our daily lives as You would have if You had come now.... You tell us to walk as You did which means we have the picture to align ourselves by even today.