It's been awhile since I've had the motivation to sit down and put words to all that I am learning and experiencing. Sometimes I get frustrated with my lack of discipline, but I also know that there is a divine timing to all things. Sometimes a word spoken prematurely can't bare the fruit for which that word was intended to produce. I believe there are words inside of me waiting to be released, and when the timing is right they will go out and transform hearts. I trust that God is preparing hearts to receive those words which he is maturing inside my spirit during these months away from home. I will say this; my whole life I had this deep longing in my heart for something which I had never experienced, but somehow my spirit knew existed. I knew there had to be more to life than simply going through the motions. I was always a deeply analytical/philosophical person; but all my analysis came up empty. It was out of this place of reaching the end of my ability to produce the answers I so earnestly desired that I encountered God, and my life was never the same.
Often times I will talk about God, and I get this response, “Wow…you’re really religious, huh?” It’s in this moment that my heart and brain want to explode with such a fervent desire to express the inexpressible. For centuries, people who truly love God have gone around trying to undo the stigma that is attached to “religion.” But religion was not God’s idea…it was man’s. Religion is what happens when you take something so far beyond your comprehension and you try to minimize it into something you can control, a thing us humans are infamous for. When we think of religion, we think of restrictions, limitations, and conformity. It breaks my heart, because this is the exact opposite of what a relationship with God actually looks like. In reality, it looks like watching the deepest desires of your heart being realized and fulfilled. It’s overwhelming peace amidst a world full of chaos and suffering. It’s empowerment to do the things you always dreamed of doing and never thought possible. It’s complete freedom to be who you were created to be without caring what the world thinks. It’s like the feeling of being in love without the fear of being hurt. It’s not some sort of spiritual mind trick…it’s the most real thing you will ever experience. It’s not something you can grasp by human reasoning or logic alone…it’s something you need to experience firsthand to understand. And it’s something that is possible to anybody who is curious enough to ask for it. We pick up our cell phones and communicate with people on the other side of the world without questioning how that even works, we simply believe because the person on the other end picks up. What if God picked up the phone? What if it was so real that you could not deny it happened?
I get overwhelmed when I think about writing because I know I don’t have the words to do God justice. I can tell you about the blind man who was baptized and came out of the water with his sight restored, people who had terminal cancer and were radically healed, the paralyzed woman who stood up out of her wheelchair on the street and walked for the first time in eight years after being hit by a car, or the countless times God has spoken to me in dreams and visions and then come through, doing exactly what he promised, bringing me to exactly where he wanted me. But my words alone aren’t enough. At the same time I know that what is living inside of me is so powerful and it’s just crying to be released upon a generation that so desperately needs it. We have such a high value for freedom in this country, yet so many people are walking around in bondage to things that they don’t have the ability to change in their own strength. In bondage to lies that the world masquerades as the truth. In bondage to their circumstances, their illnesses, their limited perspectives. I am just trusting that these aren’t just words, but the spirit of the living God would actually breathe life into my words and he would draw you into an encounter with him. For those that don’t know whether they believe or not, I pray God would touch you personally; that it wouldn’t be something you take my word for, but that you would experience His goodness and His love for yourself. If you made it this far…you didn’t read this by accident :) I pray that you experience everything I have experienced and THEN some.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” –Matthew 7:7-8
I'm waiting for my encounter!
ReplyDelete