A Painful Sense of Urgency

I had a moment tonight. One of those moments you don't forget. One of those moments where you feel and see and taste the presence of the Lord. A tangible moment with a currently intangible God.
A gift. Grace. Nothing else.

It started with a moment of sin yesterday. It was put in my face and I had a very real conversation with myself/ the Lord about it. "Yes, Jesus I want you more than anything, but I don't see how doing this goes against that. Why can't I have you and this thing? If I say yes to this, I know that I'm saying you aren't ultimate in my life, but it doesn't feel like that's what I'm saying." And so on it went, eventually ending with my failure. I thought to myself, if I would choose this even while being fully aware and conscious of my decision... there must not be any hope for me. Grace has been abused. How can I plead with the Lord for forgiveness when I knowingly and willingly pursued something not pleasing to Him in front of His face? I made a mockery of my Lord and now I want forgiveness? Who's to say that I won't do this again? Make the same conscious decision to please myself instead of pleasing the Lord...
I was in such a funk after that. I didn't feel a whole lot cause I wasn't "worthy of weeping and asking for forgiveness" or whatever that means. So I continued to exist. Trying to forget about it and just get past it in the hopes that I wouldn't do it again - or would make the right decision next time. (All the while secretly praying that I would feel the weight of my sin so that I might have reason to choose Christ next time).

And then today for no reason at all, or perhaps every reason in the universe, the Lord gave me Himself like a waterfall of crashing grace. Undeserved. Unmerited. Favor of the Lord. His mercy overtook me and left me void of all words that could describe it.
This started in ballet class this afternoon. (I know, I know... more ballet. It's where I spend most of my time these days, so bear with me.) I was in class with my V-neck leotard on (and yes, this makes a difference) and I decided that I didn't want to waste a single second of class. I pushed myself to think about all of the corrections I'd been given this semester and try to apply them in my body. I was sweating by the first combination. Score. By the end of class I was drenched and it felt so wonderful - I had this urgency to actually be good in Ballet. Something I haven't really wanted before because I knew it wasn't possible for my body (or something like that). Then I asked my teacher if I could take her class right before mine every once in a while so I could take 2 in row. I thought, if I could take a ballet class right after this one, I'd be warm and on my leg and ready to really apply everything I'm learning. If you know me at all... this is a pretty crazy thought knowing that I already take ballet 5 days a week. When I asked her this she simply said, "yes" with a look on her face like she expected the question from me. Or hoped I would ask. Not a cheesy smile by any means... just a look. Very simple. It was encouraging.

Then I had a note on our dance board saying I had something in the office that I needed to pick up. I was naturally confused and started thinking about all the things I could have possibly left behind that had my name attached. Nothing came to mind. It was a bag and for fear of it being some random embarrassing clothing item I waited to check till I was not in front of the guy who gave it to me. So I walk outside and it was sprinkling. Little bits of rain hitting my face and my body. I felt the eternal goodness of Jesus in that rain. Silly as it might be.
So I go home with a glad heart not even thinking about my sin of the day before. I open the bag and there are 3 Belhaven approved leotards in there!!! They all fit. Seriously?? I got so giddy about how the Lord was showing Himself to me that I couldn't help but smile and sing and enjoy my dinner break before class.

So I get ready and get in my car for my Old Testament night class and the song, How Great is Our God pops in my head. (The sky after a thunderstorm is so so so beautiful. Saw this as I left my house.) I have this really long playlist of live recordings of worship songs from The Village and I really love listening to them. It connects me to not only to the Lord but also to my Dallas Family that I'm in love with.
When I hit play I secretly thought, Jesus... it'd be really cool if this song was first. I turn it on and no, it wasn't first. But... it was second. :] So I sang as loudly as I could and didn't get out of my car till the song was over. Walking to class I just kept singing it and singing it. The Lord was preparing my heart for this evening.

Nothing epic happened in Old Testament. It was a normal 3 hour lecture class. Long.

On the way home I was expecting. I hit play and the next song was "So High" by Jeff Johnson. I pulled into my apartment and again I just sat. The words of that song hit me so hard. I played it at least 4 times before letting the playlist continue on. I began to weep. Almost uncontrollably. I didn't want to go inside because I thought that if I went inside I was leaving this intimacy I was experiencing with the Lord. So I just wept and asked Him if I could stay for a while. (Maybe a silly question, but I needed to hear Him answer. I needed to know how much He wanted to meet with me. I knew.) He said yes, Daughter, be with Me. So I stayed. The Lord was mighty and intimate and loving and active and vocal and pictorial and consuming and purging and more things than I could ever give words to. These lyrics were written on my heart.

Hear my spirit groan in me
A painful sense of urgency
To tell You that You are to me
So High


(Oh, these are just words. And are not enough, to contain You. Oh, these are just words. And are not enough, to acclaim You. Father, just words. And I have so few. I run out too fast, to speak them to you. You are indescribable, You are beyond expression. I run out of words for you. I can't think that high.)

I say all these things because these are the only words I have. I can build up to this moment and I can give you background for what my heart was going through to ready me, but you weren't there. And I can't explain it. It was intimacy between the Lord and I - and I'm okay that it stays that way. Matt Chandler quoted someone years back (I need to look up who it was that said this - if you know, feel free to tell me.) This man said that he experienced such intimate moments with the Lord that he was ashamed to speak of them. That was tonight. It was the fulfillment or climax of so many things that I've been praying for (or praying for a desire for). He is good. My heart knows this very well.

Press in. He's worth it.

Quotes. Read them.

"Superficiality is the curse of our age."


"Joy is the keynote of all the Disciplines."


"The primary requirement is a longing after God."


"When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight."


"Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people."


"Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey his word."


"But God continued to reach out to his rebellious children, and in stories of such persons as Cain, Abel, Noah, and Abraham we see God speaking and acting, teaching and guiding."


"He declared that he was the good Shepherd and that his sheep know his voice (John 10:4)."


"He is resurrected and at work in our world. He is not idle, nor has he developed laryngitis."

"Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind."


"But there is a danger in thinking only in terms of detachment as Jesus indicates in his story of the man who had been emptied of evil but not filled with good. 'When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man . . . he goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than the himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first' (Luke 11:24-26). No, detachment is not enough; we must go on to attachment."


"Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life."


". . . meditation as communication between the Lover and the one beloved."


". . . resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself."


"But the desire to meditate, and the grace to begin meditating, should be taken as an implicit promise of further graces."


"God created us with an imagination, and as Lord of his creation he can and does redeem it and use it for the work of the kingdom of God."


"Smell the sea. hear the lap of water along the shore. See the crowd. Feel the sun on your head and the hunger in your stomach. Taste the salt in the air. Touch the hem of his garment."


"Our task is not so much to study the passage as it is to be initiated into the reality of which the passage speaks."


"Rather than dissecting peace we are entering into it."


"To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives."


"We begin to think God's thoughts after him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills."


"David's desire for God broke the self-indulgent chains of sleep. . ."


"I love to be alone in my cottage, where I can spend much time in prayer. I set apart this day for secret fasting and prayer to God."


". . . we are committed to letting go of our will whenever it conflicts with the will and way of God."


"We begin praying for others by first quieting our fleshly activity and listening to the silent thunder of the Lord of hosts."


"Frequently our lack is not faith but compassion."


"Nor are we trying to manipulate God and tell him what to do. . . Our prayer is to be like a reflex action to God's prior initiative upon the heart."


"Your own children can and should be changed through your prayers. Pray for them in the daytime with their participation; pray for them at night when they are asleep. One delightful approach is to go into the bedroom and lightly place your hands on the sleeping child. Ask Christ to flow through your hands healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day."


"I want a life of greater, deeper, truer prayer."


- Richard Foster

REMEMBER.

So.
Letting go. Small phrase - huge concept.


I guess this started with the "palms up palms down" meditation thing I spoke of last blog. It really got me thinking about what I need to release in my life and the things that I thought I had released but were actually still present in my heart.
I went to this worship night (ish) thing that the Lord put on Aaron Chen's heart about a week ago. There were 3 words that the Lord spoke to Aaron about the night: Pray. Worship. Wait. He then spoke the meaning of the word wait. He said that it meant to remain. Hmm. Remain. That word creates such a different picture in my mind. Wait seems more passive; it seems frustrating and hard; it sounds like a desert. To remain is active; it is perhaps hard, but there is evidence of grace in the middle of it. There is this positive connotation attached with it that seems almost like it is an end in itself - rather that "waiting" for another end.
Maybe that's what I'm trying to say... when you "wait" you are always looking around the corner for the thing you're waiting for. To remain is to dwell in the presence of Something. So rather than waiting for a job and husband and family and children and this huge plan for my life that is somewhere in the vague "future;" I remain in Christ. I pursue Him. I dwell in His presence. To be on mission - wholly devoted to knowing the Lord and making Him known.
Those are very different.


I think there are way more idols in my heart than I would ever care to admit. Things that I put above God. Things that I pursue instead of God. Things that I desire more than God.


I don't think releasing something is a one time process either. I think it is something to be done daily. During this daily process I want to remember.


Psalm 42 has really been on my heart lately. It means something so different to me now than it used to. I see it now as a cry from a man in a storm pleading with himself to remember the goodness of the Lord. He is recalling who the Lord is, the power of the Lord that he has seen and experienced, and how the Lord intentionally commands His everlasting love.


"REMEMBER!!!!! REMEMBER!!! I KNOW HE IS GOOD. I KNOW THAT HE LOVES. I KNOW THAT HE CALLS ME TO HIMSELF. REMEMBER!!!"


I want to speak this to myself daily. I want to meditate on the sweetness of the Lord and His power in and through my life. I want Him to be the most important and active part of my thoughts and my actions.


Also, about psalm 42: The phrase "Deep calls to deep" has been made new to me. I used to see it as the deepness of the Lord calling to the deepness of me. Like Spirt calling to spirit. Or even the deepness of one person calling to the deepness of another person. Pursuing deep relationships with honesty and whatnot. Not that this interpretation is wrong or irrelevant, but the Lord has revealed something new. I now see it as incredibly aggressive love and calling. The Lord is Deep. So to paint a picture: The depth of the ocean is Jesus and He calls me to join Him in Himself. So essentially the "deep" in this verse is one unit. A calling B to A. A being the active agent, Jesus, and B being a person.
And then to go on in the verse it says,


[7] Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
  [8] By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
 (Psalm 42:7-8 ESV)


Roar. How aggressive is that word?? The Lord calls me to Himself in a way that roars and consumes me like a waterfall. Violent. Breakers and waves crashing over me to remind me of how good the Lord is. How present He is during trials. How His grace is more than I can even stand. And then it goes even further.... He actively commands His love that doesn't change or end. It is steadfast. I imagine Him speaking His love over me while I'm going through my day and singing it over me as I sleep. This is the God of my life. I am overwhelmed by what this verse speaks of the Lord.


(I just got real excited and vomited all my thoughts right there.... yeah.)




--funny story--
I was in ballet yesterday (cause I'm in ballet every day), and my teacher was telling us how important it was to balance at the barre. Normally I/ we hold onto the barre like it will save our lives instead of getting on our leg right away and letting go of the barre immediately. She came around and yelled, "Let go! Just do it!" I giggled to myself cause I heard the Lord speaking through her. Imagine that... Jesus talking to me in ballet class about idols I have in my heart. He would...
---end of funny story---


Nothing profound.
This is just what I'm learning.


I need His grace and I'm overwhelmed by His love. Soak in that.

Daughter.

For my 21st birthday last year I was given this fantastic ESV Study Bible. I really love it and all the resources it provides, one of them being a read-your-bible-in-a-year plan. When January 2010 came around I was going through a lot of transition and thought it would be a great idea to read through the bible again (I have done this one other time: Sept. 07-May 08 for Ingredients Dance Company ). It went really well for a while, I had recently been freed up from a few things, so I had lots of time on my hands and I actually read way ahead of schedule. As soon as summer got here though, I was already behind. This only got worse as time progressed, but I thought, "Why does it matter if I stay exactly on schedule? As long as I'm reading and being diligent to get in the Word, it's a win for me." 


All of that to say, about a week ago I was right up to Psalm 119 and I paused. I had all of these random preconceived notions about what the chapter was about. All I could think about was, "This is the longest chapter in the Bible... I'm sure it's great, but it's just so long." SERIOUSLY? What a ridiculous thought. Sure, it was long but that didn't mean that I had to read it all in one sitting. I was slightly disgusted at myself for such thoughts but i didn't actually sit down and read it for quite a few days. This probably had a lot to do with my weird mood I've been in and not so much the Psalm. 


As I've mentioned, I'm reading Celebration of Discipline and because Abigail and I haven't officially "met" to talk about the book yet, I re-read the chapter on meditation. I'm sure this was and is from the Lord. As I sat down and read through Psalm 119 the Lord blew me up with all that He put in it. 8 Verses talk about meditation, 8 verses talk about the law of the Lord being our delight, 7 verses talk about how the psalmist would long or yearn for the Lord and His law, 6 verses talk about loving the Lord with your whole heart, and 5 verses talk about this idea of eating the Word or having it on your lips. These things that I'm learning about were right there, starring at me. They deepen me and thicken me. Praise the Lord.

On a different note, I slept in this morning and skipped my Dance Pedagogy class. It's fall break! No one was there anyway. I didn't even set an alarm, but by the grace of God I woke up around 8:15 and got to spend a lot of time being quiet. In the book, Foster says that there really isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to meditate on the Lord (within boundaries), but he gives examples and suggestions to help. One is called, palms up palms down. Basically you begin by physically opening your hands palms facing downwards and release things to the Lord. This is a time of surrender. After this you turn your palms up and speak the opposite of your releasing asking to receive from the Lord. 

A few things that were on my heart: releasing my plans for my life, my need to control things, my lack of trust that He is good, my pride, and my desire for a husband (to name a few...). 

Then I turned my palms up and asked to receive the Lord's plan for my life, the Lord's providence in my life, the knowledge that He is good and does good, a humble heart that just wants to be more like Christ, and a peace about my future man, if he exists. 

Then Foster says to just be silent. Be silent and listen. So I did. I didn't hear anything for a while and then a word kept coming to my mind. At first I tried to not think about it because I wasn't sure if it was from me or from the Lord. After a while I decided either way, the Lord was using it. The word was simply "daughter." 

The Lord, the King, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Sustainer of all things calls me daughter! How beautiful and intimate. So often I think I try and earn His affection even though I would never admit that that is what I'm doing. In the back of my mind I think that He is going to love me more or see me differently if I do the right thing all the time. This is a lie. He loved me before I ever even knew Him. He loved me and died for me before I even existed. While I mocked Him and belittled Him, He said, Daughter - you're Mine. 

This brings to mind a song by Donna Stuart, Abba Father. Go buy it. 

"Abba Father,

we're Your daughters

predestined

adopted

justified

and adored.

No one and nothing

can ever separate us

from Your love!

Your embrace!

Your kingdom come.

There is therefore no condemnation

for those in Christ."

How good is our Lord? I'm humbled by His love. 

-Rah