I'm going to be honest here.
I'm not at all sure really how I can be more confident and grounded in regards to my dreams for the future, how they can be brighter and louder than ever yet shrouded in this fog of confusion and obscurity, all at once. But, alas, this is where I find myself presently. No matter how varied the circumstances I have found myself in the past year or so have been, they all seem to shout one foundational thing -
"Sarah! Come! Taste! See! Your God is enough for you. He wants to be IT. He wants to prove to you that you can be unsure about a hundred and one things so long as you're sure of One Thing. He's insane about you. And He wants to prove His love, affection, approval, ecstatic joy, daddy-heart, mother-heart, adventurer heart, outlandish provision, and reveal His mysteries. Come! Stay in this yoke alongside Him alone, it's easy with Him, so easy..."
I am praying about returning to YWAM for the School Of Evangelism that starts April 1st. I am stirred deeply every time I go and hang out there. God is about to pour out some big time stuff on that particular chunk of Christ's Body. And I want to be there for it. Desperately. With every prophetic utterance and every heart-shaking, I am pumped up beyond compare to experience what our King is about to do in response to His kids' prayers for awakening in this nation. And in this world.
It's gonna be good, brothers and sisters.
Here's an excerpt from Oswald Chambers' devotional. Enjoy.
THE DISCIPLINE OF SPIRITUAL TENACITY
"Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10
Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for - love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men - will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o'-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted.
If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience."
Remain spiritually tenacious.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Hello friends,
I truly apologize for taking almost a month to post an update on here. God has been so very active and near. I can't wait to at least attempt to share with you even a portion of what He's been showing me.
I've been officially working at the home for abused/neglected children near the Texas YWAM base for about a month now. It's been very surreal @ times because it's so similar to the place I worked at before God asked me to come with Him down to Texas and do the crazy YWAM gig about a year ago.
God has used this season to temporarily pull me out of the amazing YWAM/community living to be alone with just Him a little more regularly. And it has proved to be very eye-opening. I am constantly ever-increasingly aware of just how much I base who I am, my worth, my feeling of accomplishment, etc. on man's feedback instead of solely on what God's eyes alone can reflect back and tell me. I am learning daily just how important it is for me to look to God and the many things He daily speaks to me, those profund internal things that flow from the Spirit living inside me instead of the external things... all the things man and this world tell us. He's been clearing away confusion, fogginess, and short-sightedness. He's also moved me to fast from many different types of lessar comforts and pleasures; I have a more clear understanding of fasting than I have ever had in my life.
Here's the down low- human beings operate out of pleasure. No matter what we do, we decide to pursue it because it, in some form or another, brings us pleasure. For example, even if isolated monks in Tibet decide to sleep on a bed of nails in order to self-impose pain, they have done this because they want to deny their flesh and physical body...they believe they are giving pleasure to their minds or souls because they believe that by denying their physical body they are closer to a higher power, etc.
The thing is, when we willingly lay down pleasures for the sake of our God we are, in essence, proclaiming with our lives (hence, the power the Word discuses of combining our faith with action) that we believe that God tastes better than anything and are willing, at any cost, to put a stop to one pleasure so we are better capable to experience another, deeper, more profound pleasure. In the same way, when we willingly shut off for a time the accolades, attention, or advice of humans through fasting from email or phone, etc. or when we abstain from food in order to more accutely sense our need for the true Bread of Life, etc. , we are living out the Psalmist's declaration in Psalm 73-
"Who do I have in Heaven but You? And Earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but You are the strength of my heart, my portion, enough for me...forever."
Please continue to pray for God's divine will to have its way fully in my life daily. This is truly my deepest desire, save knowing my God better each and every day. I long for a mind that is truly ALWAYS fixed on, set on, and obsessed with Him alone. (Col. 3, Heb. 12, 2 Cor. 5) I am not sure if He desires for me to return to YWAM in April. Please pray that I know without a doubt. I do know that I desperately long to get involved once more with the 24/7 Prayer movement and to work with older youth (middle & high school and college age) leading small groups and bible studies, etc.
Anyway, I am soaking up this current season as I long to let God continue to truly free me of ways I have been conformed to this decaying world and to also fully allow Him to fill up those spaces with Himself, the eternal, the truly valuable; while also anticipating with much joy and hope the season to come!
May our God bless each of you with fresh and incredible revelation of Himself as He truly is, moderation in all things, and the joy and peace that He alone gives.
I truly apologize for taking almost a month to post an update on here. God has been so very active and near. I can't wait to at least attempt to share with you even a portion of what He's been showing me.
I've been officially working at the home for abused/neglected children near the Texas YWAM base for about a month now. It's been very surreal @ times because it's so similar to the place I worked at before God asked me to come with Him down to Texas and do the crazy YWAM gig about a year ago.
God has used this season to temporarily pull me out of the amazing YWAM/community living to be alone with just Him a little more regularly. And it has proved to be very eye-opening. I am constantly ever-increasingly aware of just how much I base who I am, my worth, my feeling of accomplishment, etc. on man's feedback instead of solely on what God's eyes alone can reflect back and tell me. I am learning daily just how important it is for me to look to God and the many things He daily speaks to me, those profund internal things that flow from the Spirit living inside me instead of the external things... all the things man and this world tell us. He's been clearing away confusion, fogginess, and short-sightedness. He's also moved me to fast from many different types of lessar comforts and pleasures; I have a more clear understanding of fasting than I have ever had in my life.
Here's the down low- human beings operate out of pleasure. No matter what we do, we decide to pursue it because it, in some form or another, brings us pleasure. For example, even if isolated monks in Tibet decide to sleep on a bed of nails in order to self-impose pain, they have done this because they want to deny their flesh and physical body...they believe they are giving pleasure to their minds or souls because they believe that by denying their physical body they are closer to a higher power, etc.
The thing is, when we willingly lay down pleasures for the sake of our God we are, in essence, proclaiming with our lives (hence, the power the Word discuses of combining our faith with action) that we believe that God tastes better than anything and are willing, at any cost, to put a stop to one pleasure so we are better capable to experience another, deeper, more profound pleasure. In the same way, when we willingly shut off for a time the accolades, attention, or advice of humans through fasting from email or phone, etc. or when we abstain from food in order to more accutely sense our need for the true Bread of Life, etc. , we are living out the Psalmist's declaration in Psalm 73-
"Who do I have in Heaven but You? And Earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but You are the strength of my heart, my portion, enough for me...forever."
Please continue to pray for God's divine will to have its way fully in my life daily. This is truly my deepest desire, save knowing my God better each and every day. I long for a mind that is truly ALWAYS fixed on, set on, and obsessed with Him alone. (Col. 3, Heb. 12, 2 Cor. 5) I am not sure if He desires for me to return to YWAM in April. Please pray that I know without a doubt. I do know that I desperately long to get involved once more with the 24/7 Prayer movement and to work with older youth (middle & high school and college age) leading small groups and bible studies, etc.
Anyway, I am soaking up this current season as I long to let God continue to truly free me of ways I have been conformed to this decaying world and to also fully allow Him to fill up those spaces with Himself, the eternal, the truly valuable; while also anticipating with much joy and hope the season to come!
May our God bless each of you with fresh and incredible revelation of Himself as He truly is, moderation in all things, and the joy and peace that He alone gives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
