i have never spent as much time with God as i have in the past week here in mozambique. the church we are working with here in maputo, la igresia de palabre de deusch, has 4 services per week- sunday morning, tuesday night, thursday night at their sister church in a nearby community, and friday evening. and that doesn't even include the 3 youth services they have on saturdays! i would say the majority of each service is prayer and worship. yes, even for the 4 hour long sunday morning services. and outside of that the majority of the ministry we have been doing here is prayer ministry, visiting homes and families and praying over congregations and pretty much anyone we run into.
if you can sort of add that all up in your head, that's a lot of prayer and worship.
this is what i wrote in my journal this morning:
i was made to worship. like… what?! we were created to literally praise you and glorify you 24/7, with our whole lives. i don't think i can comprehend what that means or what that would look like. what would we have been doing if we had stayed in eden? maybe eden was not meant to be a place of permanent residence. we were supposed to rule over the earth… "be fruitful and multiply. fill the earth and govern it. reign over." i would think that would mean leaving the garden? i guess i'm just not sure. what would that have even looked like, living in constant communion, praise, worship with you?
sometimes it's kind of tiring, worshipping and praying all the time- why is that? is it because our spirits are not strong enough yet to worship you all the time? or we just aren't trained the right way since we live in the world and we have a flesh nature? i wonder what it means to be strong in spirit. i guess i can just look at the people around me here in this church. they praise you SO MUCH and so earnestly and so whole-heartedly. i think we are going to come away from this month a lot stronger, in mind and spirit.
the idea of dwelling with you is a bit foreign/unknown to me. like what if i was a monk? that somewhat seems like a waste of time to me… even in church services i have found myself thinking that i need to go out and DO something with what i am receiving. maybe that's not wrong. but even if i never went out and did anything for you… i'm not sure where i'm going with this. but i think what i'm getting at is that we were created to simply dwell with you, to spend 100% of our time in your holy presence, in your love. and you don't need anything from me. what do i do with that?? you could reveal yourself to everyone in the world right now if you wanted to. i'm just not sure what you're doing here with this earth God. the plan is to glorify your name, right? i'm remembering something a friend once told me about the church being built to stand against principalities and the enemy. hmm. a bigger plan is going on i think. life here must not be it.
that's all i got for ya for now.
julie
