You wake up and start getting ready for work and then you realize you hear a howling wind outside. You open the door and a burst of freezing air slams against your body with cold snow slapping you into a bone-chilling shake. As you forcefully try to close the door pushing back against the wind you finally get the door closed. Your heart is jumping out of your chest and the coldness instantly wakes you up. As you hurry to the phone to call into work, you find out the whole area is being swept with a brutal blizzard. You feel excited to have the day off and grab your most comfortable clothes and start a warm fire. You sit down next to the bright fire illuminating light and warmth and you breath in a sense of peace. You grab your favorite book and rest next to the fire.
It seems few and far between when we have those times of true rest, but they are by far one of the most favorable moments. The best rest we can have is in the Lord, many people have told me to step back and breathe and rest. Knowing about it and experiencing it is two different realities. This set the full tone of my experience in training camp…and the new chapter in my life. Finding a deeper awaking in rest.
Training camp was more than what I anticipated and loved every minute of it. They put us in exercises and circumstances that push many limits for many people. It allows us to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. With self-reflection and feedback it allows us to become more self-aware, the circumstances didn’t make or brake us… but revealed us. Strangers across the world became united in love through the Holy Spirit and in community by sharing life.
The Lord actually started to prepare me for a deeper awaking in His rest on my way to America and for training camp. “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” 1 John 3:18-20
Somewhere along the line I put more burden on my pursuit than resting in the fact that I am His. I focused more on being Holy as he is (1Peter 1:16), rather than knowing I am already Holy (Rom 8:4). I’m sure I derived this subconsciously from conditional relationships in my past, but it was to the point I was frustrated when I couldn’t remember the exact address for scripture without my Bible. I was given some truth that changed my life, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” Proverbs 17:15
I was condemning myself because I strived so hard to be anointed. To live, move, and have my being in The Lord. I have been blessed to see and experience amazing things in The Lord and I know that there is more. I cherish God’s presence and love to encounter Him now. If I don’t receive a word or something instantly I am prone to go to the community and subconsciously try and get things that I should be getting from God. He has awakened so much in allowing me to know and live in His rest which is beautiful. “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Psalm 91:1
A lot of people have said I am like King David, a man after God’s own heart. I always focused and saw that as a hardcore pursuit. During the week of training camp it was a revival in The Lord and all week He was ministering to me. One of the last days we were in class and God pressed in my heart to go ask for prayer from this man. I have no clue who this guy is but I couldn’t shake this feeling. My heart was pounding but I got up and talked to him after class. We spoke a little and he prayed for me, then God gave him a vision that was breathtaking. Jesus reached in not for heart surgery, but a full heart transplant. God gave me a new heart in rest…no striving, working, burdening, or pursuing. Just because He can and He is a great Dad.
You see, having a healthy pressure to grow is sound, because if I am not growing daily I am dying gradually. If I keep doing what I have always done then I will keep getting what I have always gotten. However, it should be a healthy pressure not a shadowing stress, my growth is on Him and in Him,”being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Phil 1:6.
So I have been growing a lot in this new season of my life, in just resting in The Lord. I closed the door to the outside storm of burdens and relaxed next to the fire of the Holy Spirit. The fire that has changed my life and will never cease. God is so amazing in who He is, for He never changes and His love is deeper than we could ever fathom.
