Spiritual breakthroughs this weekend

Tonight I ask you, My Faithful Readers...(or should I call you my Blogsters?...or my Bloginators or Blogifers?...no that's too Hollywood)...anyway, can I ask you guys to please start praying more frequently and more fervently for me, for a covering blanket of God's protection to be around me and my family? Please also pray for my heightened discernment and wisdom pertaining to all aspects of my life, yet without me going to any extremes of anxious worry or hypervigilance. Pray for supernatural faith for me as the enemy might use this last two weeks before my trip to hurl some stumbling blocks my way. I claimed Psalm 91 tonight in Christ's name, reading it like a prayer, which gave me tremendous comfort and faith in the power of the Almighty -- my Refuge and my Rescuer.

Yesterday late afternoon on a walk around Town Lake, the Holy Spirit led me into a deeper level of community with him. I feel He's gifting me with deeper faith right now -- a gift I did not earn but that he is generously providing for me during this important time. In Isaiah 9:6 he is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. Yesterday on my walk it was the Wonderful Counselor who showed up, as I began praying for peace in Kenya. I felt him gently but persistently nudging me to do something for this part of his beloved kingdom that I felt required a personal sacrifice I didn't want to make. I struggled long and hard against him, but he loved me through the process of me battling against him. As I battled, one part off my mind kept going to the thought of how many dozens of times I have sung the song "I just wanna go where you want me to go, I just wanna do what you want me to do," yet at that moment while being faced with the holy spirit nudging me to take immediate action on behalf of my brothers and sisters, here was how my reaction played out:

1) tried to stop praying and pretend I never started
2) tried to ignore God and wait and see if the sense of the spirit nudging me would go away
3) tried to talk him out of the request using all forms of rationalizing and guilt-tripping
4) threw a last resort tempter tantrum accusing him of being a meany fun-stealer
5) immaturely pouted saying "fine, I'll do it, but I'm doing it MY WAY."

Yes, really did all that and even cried, out loud, while making subsequent demands on how and why I would do it my way. Luckily no one was walking where I was at that moment, and luckily we worship a loving and patient God. We also worship a God with a heck of a sense of comedic timing. As I was pouting a girl walked by with a t-shirt on that said in big letters "got God?" I laughed and being unable to resist the love for God that was growing inside of me I finally released my grip and decided to trust him and said aloud a joyful faith-filled YES!!!

It was a breakthrough moment for me spiritually, in self-sacrifice and in stepping out in the two greatest commands, Love God and Love Others. I have done a lot of reflection and introspection about it over the past 24 hours, and of course while I couldn't possibly get the whole story of all my thoughts or even that story onto this blog, I will nutshell it by saying I realized that I have shoved those two greatest commandments aside for most of my life. Thankfully God has chosen to plant and grow me at Gateway, a church where fruit of God's love and grace is alive and well, where Loving God and Loving Others are talked about and lived out regularly. Yet the commandments nearest and dearest to God's own heart have not been closest to mine, in how I live out my moment-to-moment decisions. I'm not talking about the big decisions that people see. Those are easier. I'm talking about the little ones that no one sees -- no one but you and God.

I am overwhemlingly humbled by His kind way of showing me my own blindess and making his beautiful words real to me. He seems to know just when to reveal a new truth to me in a new way...just when you think you know Him he gets better and cooler and awesomer! When the weekend began I had head knowledge of Love God, Love Others and now I have a new depth of heart knowledge from my experience. There was such amazing life in the moment of saying yes to God! At the actual moment it happened my heart released and I said out loud, "Ok I'll do it!!!" and then happened to turn to directly toward the Zilker tree of lights, upon which my eyes went immediately to the star at the top. When they saw the star they were filled with joy! Matthew 2:10 The star was such sweet confirmation for me, just like it was for the wise men 2,000 years ago. It was a reassuring sign that the Savior, MY Savior, was near.

******************************
Even as I sit here tonight typing this out and rethinking it and praying and referencing scripture and being led by the Spirit to still more unexpected scripture and truth, it's been a time of deep contemplation, which the Holy Spirit has used to bring me to a place of even greater understanding of his promises for our redemption and true life offered in Him. He has also used this evening to teach me about sacrifice. This is where I humbly confide in you that I now realize that last night I actually misunderstood my role in the sacrifice. I believed I was offering a sacrifice in order to love God and love others, not realizing I was actually offering obedience.

There is a distinct difference between sacrifice and obedience. My action was obedience to the Spirit, which is why the fruit of my action was JOY and LIFE and a feeling of overwhelming LOVE, because I am under the law of the Spirit now, not of the law! For the law was given through Moses, but God's unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. John 1:17 The promise of his love was fullfilled the very moment I chose obedience because of an earlier moment in my life when he made me free by his grace. But God showed us his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners Romans 5:8. And that was possible because of an even earlier moment when Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us 2,000 years ago, the moment when the temple curtain was torn in two, when JESUS paid the price for sinners to be redeemed by grace through faith to be able to boldly and confidently approach the thrown of God -- now THAT was the moment that took away any and every need on our part to make sacrifices! Jesus asks for our joyful obedience, not our sacrifice!! No sacrifice we could ever make would ever be worthy or sufficient anyway. We humans (I'm lumping the rest of you in here with me) like to revert back to the safety of the letter of the law, instead of trusting the Spirit of the law of Christ's love. The problem is, in the safety of the letter of the law there is no life. Only in moment-by-moment heart-pounding obedience to the Spirit's voice can life be found.

I RUN IN THE PATH OF YOUR COMMANDS, FOR YOU HAVE SET MY HEART FREE!!! Psalm 119:32

That's all for tonight folks. God has been so good and kind and wonderful to me this weekend. If you've stuck with me til now, then I thank you for letting me share this with you.

Love,
Sooz