From the Pages of My Journal

Image via Open Journal Systems

Today I’m filled with so much inspiration. God truly is faithful to bring joy to those who are in the house of prayer (Isaiah 56:7). There’s so many words that are brimming on my lips to express in this moment. Yet only so many can come out. So in asking God to help me choose them, I’m led to just copy the prayer that poured out from my heart and into my journal at the end of my time of soaking in His presence in the prayer room of my beloved Prayer House in Baltimore. Here it goes:

Oh, my soul delights in You alone, my God! I just praise Your Name! Wow, how much Your Word and the power of praise have given me life even during this time where my body’s so weak. You alone are faithful, oh God!

Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD their God.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets prisoners free,

the LORD gives sight to the blind,
the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down,
the LORD loves the righteous.

The LORD watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

Psalm 146:5-9 (TNIV)

Thank You, God! You’re the best company there is. Even when I grown deep within as I’m daily being hidden in You – going against every natural instinct I have to surround myself with people and just be in that “go, go, go” mode, You’ve placed me here to be with You as an Anna, dwelling in Your courts, with no regard to who may or may not be around me. My place is here, and it’s so evident that this is where I belong.

Oh God, continue to strengthen me even as the enemy tries to always bring something else along to steal my time away from this precious place of being with You, hearing Your voice, receiving Your heart, and standing in the gap for those who are in need.

Jesus, thank You for this call. I pray You would have Your way today. May my eyes not turn to the right or to the left, but only stare straight into Yours, for I know You’re looking at me with Your loving gaze. Oh, I feel the warmth of the fire in Your eyes. It’s beautiful, and yet terrible – for Your passion is so consuming.

So consume me, God, and burn up anything that’s not of You. Strengthen me to watch and pray.

I love You.

Pressure...

Pressure. So much pressure to say the right words; to articulate the things on my heart with complete clarity. I can barely compose any outward expression of the things the Lord is doing so deep inside.

This is the place you can find me->Lost in a whirlwind of change. So deep in the torrent that the pen to the paper cannot adequately convey the scene unfolding.

It could be paralleled to what Mary, the mother of Jesus, encountered on that fateful day 2000 years ago. The Lord totally flipped her world upside down. Her path was veered in a direction of which she never expected.

As we survey the record of her experience, we’ll find that she gave a simple response, “May it be as you have said, Lord” (Luke 1:38)

So may it be as you say, Lord! May my life look the way you want it to look. I relinquish the expectations I’ve placed on this all but fleeting moment I have on this earth and surrender them to you. You know better. For, as the prophet Isaiah so candidly puts it: your ways are higher than mine (Isaiah 55:8).

As Mary continued to travel this new path the Lord placed her on, we begin to see even deeper into her response to all these things. She simply treasured them in her heart.

So forgive me if I haven’t posted for a time, but the Lord’s given me a Mary encounter – one that has totally and radically changed the direction of my life. So the pressure’s off. All I need to do right now is simply treasure these things in my heart. The time will come for an expression of these things, but right now, words have no benefit.