I went downtown to have lunch with a squad mate yesterday. I’ve only seen Ashley one other time since we got home from our Race in late July 2012 and I could not wait to hug her and to catch up. Lunch was already set up to make the day memorably sweet.
Precious reunion!
Ashley works for an organization which partners with touring events. Right now, she’s touring with the Reset Movement, and with it are the Rend Collective Experiment, Lacey (from Flyleaf) and Josh Strum, and Matt Gilman…so we decided to stay downtown for the event.
I’m a fulltime missionary, though, and the purpose of this tour is to bring revival to America – to partner with God as he brings a new awakening of His love to this nation – starting with the church having our individual hearts ‘reset’ to God.
I was going to stay and worship and support the movement because I believe in revival in America, but I personally have my heart set on God and we have a real good thing going, so it wasn’t on my agenda to have my own heart ‘reset’ in any way…
Except that fresh revelation of the fullness, depth, height, width, goodness, and intimacy of God’s love will always, always wreck a person (in the best way).
In completely unexpected (so, true to my heavenly Father’s character) fashion, I stood in the sanctuary and began to feel deep sobs shaking through the core of my body, and I had no idea why. Tears came and I raised my arms and listened to truths of the one true God spoken over the relatively small crowd.
It became clear that God had something big for me there.
The tiniest moments of the program seemed to have been orchestrated specifically for me in ways that could only have been accomplished by someone who knows me very, very intimately.
Words and phrases that were used triggered truths replacing lies in my spirit about my identity.
Lacey Strum began to sing one of the songs on the Flyleaf album that I listened to every day on my way to school in 12th grade, a year that I spent otherwise feeding every addiction I could find (sadness, sex, substances, perfectionism, the spotlight, a perfect ability to live a double-life) to numb myself because I couldn’t see a real purpose to my existence.
“I can feel you all around me
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling
Savoring this heart that’s healing…
My hands float up above me
And you whisper you love me
And I begin to fade into our secret place
The music makes me sway
The angels singing say we are alone with you…”
I began singing along under my breath without even realizing it, and when I did notice that I knew all of the words to the song I thought, “this girl…her music tricked me into singing holy declarations over myself two years before I understood at all the value of heart that He was healing all along!”
I stood there and remembered the deep insecurities I carried and the longing I had to be seen and known and wanted. It was a hard time in my life, but honestly? High school memories don’t trigger anything in particular in me. It wasn’t a time that I spent with the Lord, but isn’t a time that I recall as having been particularly damaging, either.
Which is what made the Lord’s message to me last night that much more meaningful. He wasn’t healing a major trauma or answering my deepest prayer requests – He was meeting me in a place so trivial in my memory that I wouldn’t ever have even asked for Him to meet me there.
His love for me is so vast and all-encompassing that He wants to redeem every moment that I thought I spent apart from Him, which is what I learned last night as I heard Him speaking into my memories:
I was there. I was always with you. I saw you. I loved you then, I love you now.
After the event, Ashley introduced me to Matt Gilman. I shared with him an encounter with angels that I had at the OneThing conference where he was leading worship last December.
He thanked me for sharing and talked about how encouraging it was, and how cool and how good our God is. Then he asked if he could pray for me because he felt he was supposed to.
I (of course) said yes, and while he was praying he began to confirm things I’ve been hearing from the Lord literally all year.
Praying with Matt Gilman (Thanks for sneaking a photo, Jenna)
…I can’t help but think about how I was almost in Swaziland instead.
I first started thinking about that when Matt was leading worship during the Reset event and we sang a song that my team sang nearly every single day of our second month of the Race. If I were on the field right now, I’d be with X Squad in the second month of their Race.
If I were leading their squad instead of downtown last night, I’d have been loving on orphans on top of a mountain in southern Africa. It would have been fruitful and life giving and exhausting and fun…but it wouldn’t have been this.
It wouldn’t have been divine encounters that I could not in a thousand years have guessed or been creative enough to write myself. It wouldn’t have been the freedom and the clarity that I’m experiencing right now.
It wouldn’t have been a depth of redemption that has been so unique and tender that I wouldn’t even have thought to ask it of God.
And I thought I was just going downtown for lunch. It’s amazing what happens when God wrecks our plans.
How much time do I spend desiring to live unto the Lord without actually stopping to ask the Lord how He would have me spend my life?
How different would my life be if I stopped declaring, “I will work unto God!” and started asking, “Father, what would you have my work look like today?” or “Father, where would you have me serve today?”
I’m learning. I’m learning. Freedom isn’t striving. It’s so, so beautiful. I’m learning.
