So…I haven’t posted a blog in a while. I want to apologize for that…God has really been rocking my world and I have been having a tough time trying to put it into words that make sense.
I have been here in a city right outside of Manila in the Philippines for a couple days. We have spent the last a couple days reflecting on what has happened this last month in Cambodia and how God is working in our lives. We have been blessed to have Karen and Seth Barnes join us for a couple days and help us process through some of this. They have given us some direction and a few ideas for what we can do to smooth things out in the way we function as a team.
Like I said, I have been having a tough time really putting into words what God is doing to me…that is until this morning. The guys and Seth were praying together and God gave Seth a perfect picture of what God is doing to me and what he wants to do with me. It is such a beautiful image and it seriously brings tears to my eyes as I think about it.
I really feel like I should share it with you all. I am going to try to paint a picture of what happened. So I hope that God will use this to speak into your heart.
I was sitting on the cold, stone floor this morning. I had six guys around me laying hands on me. They prayed that God would give them words or a picture to speak to me. Immediately, Seth spoke up.
He said that he had a picture of a dress shirt. The shirt was all wrinkly and it was laid out on this ironing board. On the shirt was an iron. It was totally just pressing into this shirt. This iron was just burning hot and it was putting an intense amount of pressure on the shirt. As it moved along the shirt, it was making that steaming noise and there was steam flying out the sides. In my head, I kept picturing the iron popping up every once in a while to see what was going on underneath. Hot steam would fly out of the iron as it made almost like a sighing noise…you know the noise a iron makes when you put it upright and set it sown for a second…but this noise was really God sighing. The meaning behind the sigh was “yes, the heat and pressure are working…all of the bumps and wrinkles are disappearing.” But the iron wasn’t finished. There were still a lot of wrinkles left so the iron would dive back in and hot steam would just fly out the sides and keep pressing in and using its intense heat to remove the wrinkles.
This in itself is a beautiful image to me. It perfectly describes what God is doing to me. 
But Seth’s next comment is what really rocked me.
He told me that God was ironing out all the wrinkles because God wanted to put me on and wear me, which is so beautiful to me. God wants me to be this outer shell for Him. He wants me to remove anything that isn’t him inside of me. He doesn’t want me to stuff myself with anything but him…he knows how dorky I would look if I try to puff myself up and put in cheesy shoulder pad things. He wants me to be nothing more than a shirt that is filled with Him alone. When he is ready, he is going to put me on and it will be a perfect fit. He is going to put on this strange looking shirt and there will be one of those, “Dang, He makes that shirt look good” kind of moments.
God…Keep pressing into me. I love the heat and I ask that you would actually turn it up please, I need it. Complete the work you have started. I rejoice in that fact that you love me this much and want to take away the wrinkles. I find pure joy in the times when you are pressing in…and when I hear you sigh and I know that you love me so much. It brings tears to my eyes when I see that you truly are removing all the ugly wrinkles and leaving behind a beautifully smooth trail of where you have been working on me. God I pray that you would continue to iron me and I ask that you would start to press into some of the hard-to-iron places that I know I sometimes skip when I iron. Don’t take it easy on me. Don’t let one wrinkle get past you. God I also ask that you would also use a little starch at the end to to crisp me up and make me solid and more bold.
