May 4, 2008 – I had an experience with God that left me rolling on the floor of the church. Good thing I was wearing a skirt that day. The nice charismatic pentecostal people were decent enough to put some kind of cloth over my skirt to make sure I didn’t show my goods to unsuspecting church patrons.
That started this journey that I was unaware I even needed to go on. All I knew at that point was that I needed more of HIM.
Soon after, I began to get a feeling like fire in my chest whenever we would worship.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
See, I didn’t like to look stupid. And to me, raising my arms and jumping around like those other people made me look stupid.
Well, eventually the fire in my chest took over and I turned into one of those people. I looked forward to worship like it was Christmas. It was my favorite part of church. It was where I experienced the presence of God. I became a worship addict. I started buying up all the worship albums I could find. All I wanted to do was sit in the presence of the Lord.
I loved how the Spirit showed up in worship at my Assemblies of God church. I loved the freedom. I loved that I could jump around like a fool and get lost in the presence of the Father.
And then…
I found out about (dun dun dun) The WORLD RACE.
In a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, I found myself committed to going.
(Insert expectations here)
I was going on a fabulous trip with a bunch of wild, crazy for Jesus, young people. We were going to have some INSANE worship times. We were going to change the world. We were going to get lost in the Spirit in 11 countries over the span of 11 months.
And then….
I found myself on the World Race, with a bunch of strangers who did not see worship the same way I did. Most of the time we sat on the floor and sang very softly. There was very little of the jumping around and crazy “freedom” I had come to expect worship to look like.
The problem was: I didn’t know how to find God any other way but the way I had just learned. So if I couldn’t find him by being able to worship the way I wanted to worship, then how was I supposed to experience intimacy with Him?
I was so frustrated. Like a child who doesn’t get her way, I stomped and huffed and puffed to God about how I just wanted to worship him and he put me with this group of low key, Kumbaya singing, laid back worshipers.
Really, God was teaching me to find him in new ways. I soon began to have these incredible revelations every single time I read my Bible. God began to speak volumes to me while I was journaling. I was beginning to find him in different places.
Of course, the whole time, I was just longing to get back into a crazy worship environment. And….I got my wish.
One month after I got home from the WR, I went to a training camp for world racers going out that summer. Jonathan David Helser was leading worship. And…well…it got crazy. And I was in “heaven”. I was so excited to FINALLY be back in an environment where I could experience God like I was used to experiencing him.
During those 10 days, God told me that he was going to take me on a journey to learn what intimacy looked like. And he said that it wouldn’t look like it used to look. He said that the things that used to “work” were no longer going to “work”.
Great.
Soon after, I found myself leading a group of college-aged women on a trip to India. I had no idea what I was doing. The led me to the point of desperation for more of God. I asked God to show me something about intimacy and then he told me to read John 20.
If you haven’t read John 20 lately, I’ll tell you what its about.
Mary Magdalene shows up at the tomb after Jesus is raised from the dead. She sees the empty tomb and starts crying. She even sees Jesus, but she doesn’t recognize him. She doesn’t know it is him until her calls her by name. Then she runs to him and worships him.
“What does that have to do with intimacy?”, you might ask. As did I.
God said to me, through that story, that I will not always be able to find him in the place that I left him. I will constantly have to be listening for his voice. When I hear it, I need to run after it.
And then…he gradually began to stop talking to me in all the ways that I had learned. Reading my Bible didn’t take me to the same place. Journaling didn’t help anymore. I found myself leading another trip and having a harder and harder time finding that intimate place with the Lord.
This is where the green chair comes in.
I lived in Gainesville, GA for about 7 months of my life. And during those 7 months, God officially had stopped showing up in any of the places I had previously left him. The ONLY thing he kept saying to me was, “rest”.
I had a big, green chair in my room. And as I began to give up on finding God, I began to find him. In my green chair. In my room. By myself. Those were some of the best worship times I have ever had.
There was no crazy worship music. I wasn’t reading my Bible. God wasn’t talking to me and I wasn’t talking to him. I wasn’t getting prophetic words for people or deep revelations from the Bible. I was just sitting my my chair. And God was hanging out with me. And it changed me. It changed everything I had been trying to change myself. In those times, truth found its way from my head to my heart. It was awesome.
And then I got sucked through a vortex of change. And here I am, in Thailand, with no green chair. I share a room. There are people EVERYWHERE. There is no place to go to shut the world out. There is no big green chair. And that is all I want. I just want to close my door, sit in my chair, and hang out with Jesus. And I can’t do it. It just isn’t possible.
So I find myself, yet again, in a place where I can’t find Jesus where I left him. I have to listen for where he is calling me to next.
And I can say that the most intimate times I have had with the Lord since I have been in Thailand have been in moments of prayer with other people. Which is funny, because if you know me, you know that I think I suck at prayer. I don’t like to pray with people. I don’t like to pray out loud…ever. And these are the times where God has been showing up in me.
There doesn’t seem to be much faith involved in finding Jesus where we know we can find him. So he doesn’t like to ever leave us where we are at. He always wants to take us deeper. He always wants more of us. So eventually, we have to abandon what we think we know to dive deeper into Him.
Seems like everything is a process….
