This summer will be different for me than any previous summer of my life. Reason being that I am not doing anything. At all. Nothing. I am not working with ATC, not working with SMI, not working with ERI, not working for CEC, and not helping with any other camp. I am simply going to be in the prayer room and love the Lord and receive His love for me. I will have no major responsibilities, no rigorous tasks, no leadership position, and no one relying on me to lead them in any way. When the Lord started moving upon my heart related to this I was a little scared and nervous as I thought about what my summer would look like. It’s a little weird for me to sit in that prayer room every morning and watch hundreds of teens come rolling in realizing that I am not involved with them in any major way, at all. Scary? Yes. Weird? Most definitely. But good and necessary? Completely. Of course the questions roll in, “What are you doing”, “Where are you going”, “Are you going to get a job”, “How come you’re just in the prayer room”, and so on and so forth. The questions are fine, they don’t bother me that much, I am just glad that the Lord has spoken to me a ton this year about my identity and my place of standing before Him in the house of prayer as a Mary of Bethany, an Anna, and a Watchman on the wall.
Over the past month, maybe two, I have really been thinking about how I don’t want this desire in my heart to be wholehearted, completely abandoned, and completely given over to intercession and worship to be just “a good season” of my life that I one day look back on and miss. I sat in the prayer room this afternoon with tears in my eyes begging the Lord that it would not be so. Pleading with Him and asking Him for grace upon grace that this posture of my heart, setting of my life, and longing of my soul would be so much more than just a season! I want to be an intercessor forever. I want to be an Anna forever! I want to be a Mary of Bethany forever! I want the very things that move and burn in my heart right now to intensify and forever pull me forward into the depths of the heart of God! I never want my love to become a memory. When I signed up to do this whole radical, fully given, fasted lifestyle, one gaze, one goal, one vision, one thing, one dream thing, I really meant it with all of my heart! The Lord inscribed Psalm 27:4 upon my heart and I never once looked back, ever. I actually want to do this! I want it to be said of me at the end of my life that I KNEW God, that I poured out my heart in worship and prayer and spent long hours gazing and dwelling in the temple of the Lord. I want it to be said of me that I loved my husband well and served him as I serve Jesus and that I poured out all of my heart, all of my soul, and all of my life that my children would actually know Jesus and be one with Him. I never want my love to become a memory or my song to be silenced or my tears to stop falling. Granted, life will look different as I marry and have babies, but I know with all of my heart that there will always be grace for me to do that which the Lord has placed deep inside of my soul. He’s the LOVER OF MY SOUL. That means that He loves my mind, soul, will, and emotions. He loves my makeup and He ACTUALLY designed me this way. I don’t have to be afraid that He will suddenly whisk me away to a deserted island to live a rigorous, difficult, lonely life, far removed from anyone or anything so that He is somehow more sure that I am actually”radical”. He formed my heart and I can trust that He will lead me the way that He has designed me!
The questions will come and the questions will go.
The opinions will come and the opinions will go.
Whether all of the world looks at my lifestyle and my PURPOSELY wasted life and calls it foolishness or not, i’m doing it.
Why? Love compels me.
More than a season, more than a nice idea, more than hype, this is my story.
July 7th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Sounds like Jesus…