Originally published Friday, 13 March 2015.
"Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met." Matthew 6:33. (MSG)
I was wiping the shiny kitchen counter in front of me and thinking about this verse. God keeps smiling back with the nudge to search inside where His quiet work is done. My mind wandered back to a C.S. Lewis tweet as God connected some of my quiet thoughts.
"Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.” ~ C.S.Lewis.
There are so many days when I wish I could lean over our latte-laden table and tell you there has been a big awakening in my soul. I wish I could tell you that one single prayer of desperation, as I took one step into some Indian slums changed everything for me. I'm not sure if it originated there or not. Could one pair of lost eyes living in the slums, urgently and intentionally haunt me?
I again prayed for Jesus to be enough and hold my thoughts to connect with His dots.
In those slums, I witnessed desperation, a desperate class desperate for God. Followers and those following other gods, all seeking God in the most desperate of ways in the middle of their depravity. Only a few were believing Jesus was the answer to everything. In those slums I saw evil oozing from behind doorways.
When we seek God as our answer to everything, he becomes our answer to all things.
"God I want to know the holy desperation that meets YOU at the end of my everything." My simple and audacious prayer traveling back home, as I left a piece of my heart behind, asking the simple question of how can a mom raise children in someone else's trash. How could evil invade a home so easily?
I still desperately seek the God of the unsearchable to simply find answers to my questioning heart. His answer was to "live simply so others may simply live." Oh how my prayers changed while stepping into the desperate prayers of another mother.
The slummy mess brings a deep and desperate contentment in God alone. Not only for what He does, not only for how He provides, not only for the peace He gives, but only and simply for who He is.
"Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves." ~ Sir Francis Drake, 1577
I wiped the counter again like it was the first time in my already clean kitchen and realized this restless season was for my spiritual springing. I simply started to take a spiritual inventory to look back at where I've grown.
When you look at your past prayers, God shows you where you have been. God brings restoration and healing in those areas where only you know you need... through the letting go and letting open of the places that we tend to desperately hide.
He has brought me to a deeper level of prayer. He met me in my seeking and searching as I have sought Him first above all things. I have waited patiently to let His grace unfold in my life. I have made time for reading His love letter to me. God cares much more about our character imitating His character, rather than bringing more under our wings to manage. In consistently seeking from a desperate heart, God has prepared me to give my heart away with abandon.
God is bringing freedom and abandonment in many areas right now. In my desperate seeking, I have found so much more. My soul is budding by leaps and bounds by creating spring-margin for God to bring deeper still the growing in wisdom and stature.
Oh how I love the spring of the Spirit. It feels like we've only just begun, God, but just a few steps in, I know this spring season will be different
Be desperate for more Spirit springs. Take and let Him make deep roots, causing the push of new growth towards the light of His Love. God not only shakes our worlds but He desperately awakens our souls in due seasons and in perfect time.
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