My summer has been a beautiful story. God wrote it before I was born, and I can just imagine that He has been waiting in heaven anticipating this time! From all 14 hours of the Call to all 30 days in Kansas City, God planned each moment and it was perfect! He has awakened my heart to such a deeper level and I feel more alive and at peace than ever before.
At the Call, Misty Edwards sang the words, “How far will you let me go, how abandoned will you let me be.” I have prayed those words often, and they have a deep meaning to me. When I pray that, I am thinking along the lines of, “God, I desire to give everything to You, but I am unfaithful. I need Your faithfulness to keep me committed. I am too weak to stay committed to any vow I make, so what level of consecration will You give me grace to follow through with? What will you give me the grace to surrender to You? How much grace will You give me to fast? How much grace will You give me to pray? I am wandering out on the limb of radical consecration, how far out can I go, knowing that You will hold me up and this branch won’t break?” I hate making rash vows and being unable to fulfill them in my human weakness. But if God calls me to a new level of surrender, He will give me the grace to sustain it.
At the Call, I really cried out to God. This past year has been ok, but I want to be more devoted to Him with less compromise. I prayed that song, asking Jesus to lead me into a deeper devotion. But I had no clue what that would really mean. Over the next month, while I was at IHOP, He changed my whole perspective. I have a different understanding of what it means to be set apart, more like the Nazerites in Numbers 6. It appears that each time I take a month and completely surrender to God, He completely refocuses my life. Now I am refocused and set to seek Him during this school year. The thing I am most called to at this time is learning the “practice” of the presence of God. There will be a lot more about that to come!
August 29, 2007 at 2:24 am
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September 18, 2007 at 1:03 pm
“I am wandering out on the limb of radical consecration, how far out can I go, knowing that You will hold me up and this branch won’t break?”
I love this. I have loved that song from the first moment I heard it and it really affects me to sing it. I didn’t get to go to the Call, but… Your post really encourages me. I feel like a failure sometimes when I cannot walk out my passion for God. I know it is from Him, I know He is teaching me, and that He is patient with me. I know in most cases, He has to mature me, then he will give me the knowledge and the walk, as a gift.