A couple weeks ago, I attended a women’s conference called Holy Spirit Encounter in Kingston, Georgia. It was a weekend so radical that it’s challenging to put into words. I find myself saying that so often these days: “words fail.” I guess that’s what begins to happen when you are truly living transformed by a power greater than yourself… by something far greater than you. God’s greater than us. So we aren’t meant to be able to compartmentalize and put words to all of it. Some of it is just meant to be experienced; to feel and hold close…to personally process and let it land the way God wants it to in our hearts.
I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.
As on fire as I have been on my walk with the Lord, in specifically the last year of life, I came into my weekend at Holy Spirit Encounter realizing that there were still huge doubts I was holding onto. ‘Am I crazy for believing in a God I can’t see? Are others going to think I’m crazy? Is this right? Am I really about to go across the world to share the gospel!?’ I think many of us struggle with these questions; I surely do. Stepping out on faith in literal FULL surrender of my own life, my own desires, my own dreams, and letting the Lord lead me has been both beautiful and magical, and yet terrifying. Sometimes this all feels so foreign, and yet it is the most freeing season I’ve ever walked through with Jesus. My life is no longer mine, but it belongs to the Lord; completely to Him. “Confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart.” (Romans 10:9) It doesn’t say my mind won’t doubt. But it does say speaking things out and having my HEART rooted in Christ is the obedience I need to walk in.
So Holy Spirit Encounter: One of the things that happened that weekend was going into a prayer room. A prayer room is just what you’d think it is: a safe space you go into with two other women that are praying and interceding on your behalf so that the Lord can speak to you intimately. Getting quiet and still with God is something that is completely imperative to life as a believer, and yet as someone who’s constantly on the go, it’s something most believers (including myself) often lack in making time for. This space, allowed me to do this in a new way, and hear from God in a way I maybe had never heard from Him before.
I want to share the vision of wisdom that the Lord led me through in that prayer room that day, in hopes and prayers that you may be able to relate to this in your own life.
Upon getting comfortable in conversation with the two women in the room, I admitted to them that I had come into the weekend with a wall up. It was a wall of doubt, fear, and skepticism; skepticism towards the depths of my faith… towards how far I really wanted to go in the idea of “going deeper with my Father.”
With as much doubt as the enemy had stacked against me, God had that much more eagerness, willingness, and desire planted in my heart to push through this day filled with doubts; a season of a lot of doubts to be honest. I shared that I wanted to take down this doubt-filled, fear-stacked wall once and for all.
“Are you sure you’re ready to take it down?” the one woman asked me.
I hesitantly said, “Yes.”
“All you need to say is a simple ‘yes’ or ’no’.” (James 5:12) I’ve found more recently in life that God doesn’t always ask for a firm, strong ‘yes’ to Him. I think our ‘yes’ can be said with fear and trembling. Nevertheless, it’s a ‘yes’ to Him, and from what I have experienced, He honors that.
So I closed my eyes and began moving through this vision with the Lord: I was standing in front of this “wall.” It was a concrete wall that started really low on one side, and built up really high on the opposite side. It was roughly 40 feet wide, and about 30 feet tall… big enough, but not bigger than the vast desert that surrounded it in every direction I could see. I was standing right up against the tallest side, looking up puzzled on how I was going to take it down. I knew I needed Jesus’ help though. I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
But Jesus was far off in the distance; far out in the desert and closest to the shorter side of the wall. So I asked him to come stand with me and hold my hand. “Come near to God, and He will come near to you.” (James 4:8) He came and stood right beside me, and held my hand. But didn’t say a word.
‘How do I get this wall down now? Jesus is with me but he’s not saying a word or giving me any directions of how we’re supposed to do this!’
I thought the silence of the Lord would be frustrating, but it was actually comforting. He didn’t have to say anything. His presence was enough for me to become aware of what needed to happen to take the wall down.
“It’s your breath in our lungs; so we pour out our praise! We pour out our praise!” These lyrics started to play on repeat across my thoughts at this very moment. I literally laughed out loud.
“I think I’m supposed to just breathe. I think Jesus wants me to blow the wall down with my breath.”
The lyrics from that song were all I could think about, and what made me laugh with sheer joy! All while the lyrics are singing across my mind, I’m thinking to myself, ‘But Jesus… bro… the wall is concrete and it’s so high! How we gonna take this thing down with just breath!?’
Sometimes, I don’t think we’re supposed to get immediate answers to the questions we have regarding our obedience to God. Sometimes I think we’re just supposed to be obedient. Sometimes I think we (me) need to just shut up and listen to what God is teaching us…what He‘s showing or saying to us. And the to do that very thing. Willingly. Believing, and not doubting. To not always ask the how’s and why’s and what if’s, but to just say,
“Okay. Your will above mine, Lord. Let’s do this.”
And so we did.
With my hand clutched inside Jesus’ hand, we began to breathe on the wall. And you know what? That concrete wall began to crumble and fall. But it wasn’t crumbling into concrete as I had anticipated. Y’all… It was paper! You know the cardboard “bricks” that little babes play with as children? The lightweight paper bricks that you can literally push over with a tap of your finger, or the breath in your lungs? Ones that if you step on they’ll just flatten to the ground? That’s what the “concrete wall” began to crumble to the ground into: paper. Just paper.
“So the wall wasn’t even real?” the woman in the room asked me as I was sharing everything aloud through this vision.
“No… no, I guess it wasn’t.”
Here’s what God taught me from this: Sometimes the walls we think we have up in front of us aren’t even walls at all. Sometimes they’re walls that have already been taken down. They’re walls Jesus brought down for us long ago. Yet the enemy still knows the walls we used to have up. He knows if he schemes and tries hard enough, that he can mask the walls that God has already taken down in our lives, to look like they’re concrete barriers we have to overcome again. But y’all, so often they’re not. They’re just fake walls of lies and deceit; not even real. My wall of doubts & fears I thought needed to come down wasn’t even real! And these false barriers that we fix our eyes on, in fact don’t need more wisdom to understand; they don’t need more therapy, or more knowledge or guidance to overcome them. All they need to disappear is for us to ask the Lord to stand with us, hold our hand, and breathe. They come down from breath, and praises, and prayers. Breath and praises and prayers expose the enemy, and make him literally powerless to deceive us; they make him powerless to build the fake walls we’ve taken down long ago; the walls Jesus took down for us when He went to the Cross.
Once that paper wall came down in the middle of that desert, I noticed out in the distance was a lush green garden with a stream flowing. It was life, and new growth; life and new growth I couldn’t even see because of the fake wall of lies I was standing behind and being blinded by. The life and growth God has for us are on the other side of the enemy’s lies that he’s faking us out with. As believers and kingdom changers, we have to ban together to make him powerless. Let’s hold hands with Jesus, and with each other, and call out the lies we’re living behind. Lets start sharing them and learning from each other’s experiences. Let’s start breathing down the walls that don’t exist with prayers and praises. We don’t need more wisdom and knowledge of how to do it. We just need to do it.
Fast forward to three days after this vision: I’m sitting in my living room with three of my best girls, praying towards and rehearsing for the night of music and poetry at Crazy Love Coffee. We sat to hear from the Lord during a 12 minute spontaneous worship song by The Upperroom (it’s called Design if you need a quiet time song). In that time, God spoke 4 words to me: Breathe. Sit. Stay. Sing.
Breathe.
Sit.
Stay.
Sing.
Woah.
Four days later, I’m at church, and the band moves into their last song before the message. I may as well have been standing there holding Jesus’ hand like in my vision when the words rang out from the stage.
“It’s your breath in our lungs; so we pour out our praise! We pour out our praise!”
I see you, Lord. I see you so vividly. And I’m praising You for every bit of sheer miracle magic your working out in my life, and the lives of those around me.
Recently, I’ve had a gift of a new life in the mix with mine. This new life loves to rock climb. And I’ve gotten the joy of going with them twice now. So now instead of looking at fake walls I can’t take down, I’m getting to climb them. One step at a time, one breath at a time, one prayer at a time, one song at a time. I’m climbing walls I once stood in front of in fear, that I now climb with triumph. (& funny secret, the ones I’m scaling at the climbing gym are just plastic, fake walls too— Jesus is funny like that y’all)
Whatever walls you’re standing in front of today, I encourage you to ask the Lord to come hold your hand as you look up at them. I encourage you to get still; to pray & sing praises to him, then to breathe and take them down with him. He’s capable to take the walls down that we can’t… walls that may not even be real. But fake walls that only He will sweetly reveal to you. And when they come down, tell someone about it. Tell me about it. Let’s rejoice together.
If your eyes are gracing these words, know I am praying for you today. It‘s the last month of the decade. Lets call on the Lord more than ever, and tear these walls down together.
Be loved today peeps— & don’t forget you are <3
