ROCKED MY FACE OFF!!!

I have just had a “defining moment” week in my life.

I remember the season that led up to my reinvention of what this heart believed to be true about church and God and an authentic relationship with Him so vividly. It sticks out to me and will forever be a mark of my spiritual journey because it reshaped so much of my own walk with God. I learned in a small group of people in my 20′s what it meant to passionately love God and become a disciple attempting to follow so closely that the dust from His steps might land upon these feet. I wanted to become a follower of Christ, the platitudes and cliches would no longer satisfy all that was stirring in my heart. I wanted Him – a true version of Him – a pursued intentionally version of Him – a manifestation of Him in my life in the ways that I chose to live out every part of life. That season actually began my “relationship with Him.” My belief in Him came much earlier but His permanent home in my heart took up residence during that season. It was a “defining moment.”

So when I use the words “defining moment” they bear weight in my heart. They carry with it the idea that it marked me so deeply that parts of my heart/life/pursuit of God will forever be changed from the experience.

In the same way that worshipping with a small group of folks “reinvented” my ideas about community and God and church and walking with Him, this week has marked me as significantly in my views of ministry. I have been changed forever by both witnessing these women serve and minister and by the empowering of feeling like God was challenging me to go and do likewise in the sphere of ministry that He has placed before me.

I have a feeling this blog will be the spot where I wrestle out some of what’s in my heart about my time here and ALL that has happened as a result of it. Even typing that I have a myriad of words coming to mind for blog topics…hesed, easy love/hard love and all that happens in between, Psalm 103 (which could easily be 150 blogs on it’s own), a whole host of names of women who have touched me deeply and things you should hear and know about each of them, oh heavens, I have soooooooooo much crowding for space and desperately needing a way to flow out that I’m gonna need a way (if for no one else but me) to say some of this … so this is it!!

One of the things I have read over and over and over again since someone was kind enough to share this with me is this prayer. It resonates. It challenges. It screams in some moments and whispers in others. Today this is what I need to share and what I need to log on this space, so that I never forget how much it spoke to me in this season.

An Answering and a Refusing

We confess you to be the God who calls,
Who wills,
Who summons,
Who has concrete intentions,
For your creation,
And addresses human agents
Who do your will.

We imagine ourselves called by you…
Yet a strange lot:
Called but cowarldly,
Obedient but self-indulgent,
Devoted to you, but otherwise preoccupied.

In our strange mix an answering and a refusing,
We give thanks for your call.

We pray this day,
For ourselves, fresh vision;
For our friends, great courage,
For those who search for You in places more dangerous than ours,
Deep freedom.

As we seek to answer your call,
May we be haunted by your large purposes,
We pray in the name of the utterly called Jesus, Amen.

And amen