Month: March 2017

The horror of waiting on God

Don’t let anyone lie to you.

Waiting on God for anything can be a horrific experience. As long as we remain on this side of eternity there is nothing pleasant about waiting.

The maturing believer learns to manage it better but there is still a horror that permeates your soul at 2am in the morning as you toss and turn in a night that refuses to dawn.

l am not sure what is worse in the waiting- the silence of God or the cluelessness of how long. But i am sure that it is not a choice i would make. Yet  i am learning that to surrender is to learn the virtue of waiting for God’s timing.

l remember Joshua on the edge of Jericho- There is a confidence that comes to you when you have just witnessed God split open a boisterous Atlantic Jordan for your entourage to waltz through. There is an urgency in your spirit to take possession of your promise when you find yourself on the front porch of the place God is bringing you to.

And yet it is right at that font porch that you begin to experience your horrific lesson in waiting-

l read the narrative of Joshua’s arrival at the border of Jericho and I am shocked that this is the place that hod decides to circumcise full grown men of war. l have never really been Kicked in the balls but I have accidentally sat on my balls. It is a delibitating experience. And yet it is nothing compared to the crude surgery that Joshua and company were asked to do at the edge of Jericho.

His one thing to be handicapped in a place of safety. It is another thing to be handicapped in a place between slavery and freedom, between unemployment and a Job interview, between bareness and the pregnancy test result between a job offer and feedback on your negotiation. Perhaps even more horrific is Knowing that your enemy Knows you are coming.Or Knowing that you have to have sex in the ovulation window it you want to conceive this month, or Knowing that you are one of two strong candidates and there is very title difference between both of you.

Waiting is horrific because we are limited by our sphere of time. Waiting is horrific because with each day Joshua and his army waited to heal of their chipped penises Jericho had a chance to fortify their defenses. Waiting is horrific because if Jericho decided to launch an offensive first the team was in no position to defend themselves.

Waiting is horrific because it is a place of vulnerability. It is a place of surrender. It is a place of absolute helplessness.

And yet waiting is where the most sovereign act of God is demonstrated.

The penile surgery of Joshua and his team was a horrific moment on the verge of the promise. But it was also a defining moment of the commitment of God. It was God pausing the movie to ensure that the popcorn will not finish just before the climatic scene. It was God sending a text message to the bride on her way to the altar just to tell her that the groom cant wait to get married to her.

Waiting on God can be a horrific experience where you are in pain and tears and discomfort and vulnerable. But it is also the most reassuring experience if you have learned to sense the subtlety of the spirit.

Teach me to recognize your subtle sooereigty in my waiting dear god.

The Surrendering of God

Surrender.

This has been  gods instruction to me for 2017. And it has been one of the most painful instructions l have had to follow since I learned to walk by the leading of the spirit.

l have struggled and wrestled with God like never before. I have been stripped of my sense of security and safety. I have been made a bare footed priest walking on hot burning coals. l have been so ripped apart of my sense of self that l have had nothing to say to God for a while.

But tonight God reminded me that he is a priest that is familiar with all of my affliction. As I sat in silence in his presence with Travis Greene playing softly through my earpiece, God reminded me that he is touched by the feeling of my infirmity.

He said, do you know why you love me? Because I first loved you. Do you know why you must surrender to me? Because I first surrendered to you. I ask nothing of you that I am not willing to give to you. I make no demands of you that I have not sacrificed for you.

l am able to comfort you in your pain because of the comfort that I myself have had to learn. Jesus was me surrendering my divinity to your humanity. My death on the cross was me surrendering my immortality for your mortality.

Surrendering is not a pleasant process. It is a death to self. It is a death for love. It is an exchange for life.

But be of good courage. The cost of surrendering is nothing compared to the glory that shall be revealed afterwards. I know this because I have been there and done that.

Jesus is my price and reward of surrendering. For as many as l have predestined l have chosen to be confirmed to the image of Jesus.

A shield and a reward

Waiting on god is hard. forget all the pep talk you hear from religuous folks about how patience is a virtue and how god is never late. This truth does not negate the depth of despair and desperation that comes with stepping oit of a boat in the middle of turbelent waves based on that silent inner voice that only you can articulate. What makes it even more alarming is the fact that you are acutely aware that your clock is ticking.

Waiting on god comes with sleepless nights. Nights where you wonder when dawn will arrive, when the promise will be fulfilled, when hope will  no longer be deferred. On those nights, it is sometimes hard ro make conversations with god. You have been there and done that already. You are now at a place of silence where words no longer exist. 

Surrender. It is a place where you have no defense, no arguments, nothing to boast of. It is the place god called abraham to when he asked him to go out of his country, his relatives and his father’s house. Waiting on god begins with a striptease. Everything you know of security is stripped away. Surrender is a type of nakedness, a type of vulnerability. Surrender is a place where you have no sheild or reward except god himself.

Do not be afraid abram. I am your shield and the one who will reward you in great abundance.

God is repeating those words to me tonight at 2am. Like abraham i am waiting. Like abraham i am wandering about the promised land. Like abraham i am afraid i heard wrong. like abraham i am worried that i just narrowly escaped famine and war. like abraham i am afraid.

Faith is not the absence of fear. Religious folks tell you otherwise. But when you live your faith beyond the words of the man at the altar. When you live your faith beyond the written words of the bible, you realise that faith is courage in the midst of fear. Faith is walking through the red sea with a trembling heart and eyes wide shut. Faith is hearing the echo of a whisper in your spirit. Faith is stretching out a foot in the darkness of a dungeon.

A shield and a reward. This is the driver of our faith. This is the reassurance that we didn’t make a mistake. This is the reminder that god is not make-believe. This is all i have in between the promise and the position.

A bare-footed Priest

When God started talking to me about 2017 the first place he took me to was the border line for Jericho. I stood on the sidelines and watched joshua talk to the man with the sword. I listened as god ran a commentary on that networking event for me. as joshua hooked up with the commander of the lords army (jesus christ) his instant reaction was to hit the floor in submission, or absolute surrender. That’s the first thing god taught me. The next thing he started teaching me was the key to surrendering -take off your shoe because you are on holy ground. I thought gethsamane was painful, i am learning that being barefooted is more intense.

Being bare footed means being vulnerable. It is a place where you wrestle with god, in tears, in pain, stripped bare of every human strength and effort. It is a place where you kick and punch at the one that you are hugging and desperately clutching on to.

I have been thinking of Abraham lately. I realize that Abraham also has to learn how to be a bare footed priest. I see the intense struggle ans vulnerability that abraham must have gone through before he got to the moriah mountains. There is something that dies on the inside of you when you have to surrender the one thing you will lay down your life to protect. For Abraham it was Isaac. For me it has been  my marriage. I think that abraham died a thousand deaths before he stripped isaac and laid him bare on rhe altar of sacrifice.

I have also been thinking of isaac. I think that 2 people died on mountain moriah that day. Abraham and issaac. There is a death that happens on the inside when you know the one that you love is the one that is betraying you. There is a death that happens on the inside when you know you have no words to comfort the one uou love as you prepare to slit his throat. I think there was a 3rd death on moriah that day. I think that god also died on the that mountain top. There are many who think that god must be a sadist to demand the death of isaaac from a man who had waited forever ro birth him. I think what these set of people do not realize is that watching abraham die a thousand deaths is perhaps more heart breaking than anything in the world. Watching Issac lay down on the alter without a struggle was even a double death for God. I think that, on that day on mount moriah, god finally found a love that superseded anything he could have imagined. God found a man that was completely dead to self and made a choice to choose the giver over the gift. I think that mount moriah was a replay of the garden of Eden. Only this time man made the right choice. I think that i finally get it why god does not play with abraham. And why  he has chosen to be named after Abraham – the God of Abraham.

This is what being barefooted means to me. A place of total and absolute surrender. A place of death to self. A deep stripping of the self in me. It is not a pleasant process.

Last night I yelled at god. more like screaming, Kicking and punching. And demanding that he leave me alone. That’s how painful and exasperating the process has been.