Thursday, March 7, 2013

God I Hear You

Do you ever just have this moment where you feel like something cosmic is pulling you or pushing you towards or even away from something?!
I've been experiencing that.  Especially today.  Today I just want to look up at God and say "Ok, I got it!!".

I hear a lot of people say that they never experience God speaking to them.  I hear God all the time.  I've come to terms that maybe my definition of "God speaking" is different than others or maybe that God has to communicate with me differently because I can be so stubborn.  I'm not sure what it is but it seems the last several months, maybe even a year, God has been pushing me towards the mission field.  More specifically, Tanzania.

To be honest, I can't remember specifically when God told me I was going.  It was either during my conversation with him when  he told me he was going to heal me...or during the fasting I was doing right before he healed me.  Either way, it was a few years ago.  I know he told me.  I can't shake it.  I try to talk my way out of Tanzania and into some place closer, preferably downtown Charlotte.  I mean mission work can be done ANYWHERE right?!...so why Tanzania?  I don't know.  I just know that my spirit is becoming uncomfortable.  It's wanting me to move.  I'm seeing my commission everywhere I turn.  From books, sermons, people, you name it.  It's there.

Pray with me.  When I look at this through human eyes I'm left anxious, fearful, nervous, confused, unsure.  However, looking at it through my spiritual eyes I'm at peace.  I know God's voice.  I know I can have peace in Him.  He has it figure out.  He holds all the answers. Pray that I have courage and strength.  Pray for my obedience.  Pray for favor and open doors.  

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Healing: 2 Year Anniversary

I can't believe it's been 2 years.  I think about it often though.  If I think about it long enough I can still bawl my eyes out at the wonder of it. My life is so different now.  I still love my sleep and I still hate waking up in the mornings but it's different.  

It's not just my sleeping patterns that are different though.  I'm different.  I think back to where I was in my relationship with God then and how that day God ignited a desire in my heart for Him that I had never experienced. My life was no longer about ME but what God could do through me.  I see that now.  I didn't then but I had the yearning.  I just knew that somehow I had to give back! I knew God didn't heal me so I could sit back and enjoy it for myself.

I think back to the guilt that I was living with.  All of the mistakes I had made.  The failure I felt for "knowing better" and yet stuck in a horrible cycle.  Wondering how I could make the decisions I was making knowing how I would feel afterwards.  I get it now.  There was no cure for any of it, there was nothing *I* could do but seek God.  HE would change me.  He would change my desires.  He changed my life.  The loneliness, the fear, the shame, the anger, the exhaustion, the frustration...He's taken it.  Unlike my physical healing it wasn't an immediate healing.  It's been a process.  He's brought so many things into my life....fostering dogs, small groups, a new church, a sponsored child, sermons, bible studies, friends, to just name a few.  Each thing refining me in a different way.

I have new friends in my life.  Friends that didn't know me the first 30 years of my life.  They see my life now.  They see the whole me.  I wish they could take a glimpse at the old me.  The pain, the hurt, the struggles.  I really DO get what they're going through.  I've been there. Oh how I've been there.  I've made the mistakes but God has redeemed them. 

I just recently watched as Jim Bakker came back to Heritage USA to celebrate how God has come full circle in his life and they called it a Restoration Weekend.  That hit home for me.  God restores.  If all this is nothing but babble, walk away knowing God can and does restore. I'm proof.