64. Wake Up and Breathe
Posted by:
SeLahGirl on
April 24, 2008 at
3:41PM EST
Wake Up and Breathe
from my prayer time (4-24-2008)
God is always speaking. When he is emphasizing something, his voice can
be heard all around you thru your day from tons of unrelated sources.
Recently he was speaking about BREATH and BREATHING. It was everywhere
and culiminated in a Rob Bell video that my son shared with our family.
It touched on the suggestion that perhaps every breath we breathe is an
utterance of the name of God. How that everyone is actually confessing
Him and His existence whether they realize it or not, simply by
breathing and being alive. It had a great impact on our family and our
teens.
God seemed to follow that word with the phrase WAKE
UP. We have been hearing it every where including another Rob Bell
video about Creation where he is discussing that the days were
described as being the evening and then the morning. Which could be a
whole other blog, and may be eventually. haha. But in the midst of that
teaching he randomly remarks, WAKE UP!
So yesterday, I was
craving a fresh word of worship from the Lord. I often pray lyrics.
Nothing was satisfying a very intense spiritual hunger. So I was on
myspace responding to an urgent message from someone in a desperate
situation. I was looking for some background music to play in a
separate tab as I was writing a response to her. And decided to check
out Jared Anderson's page since I haven't been there in a while. Little
did I know it was truly the Spirit of God leading me to a conversation
with Him.
By the time I finished the message and sent it, I
was so moved by the lyrics of Jared's new cd that I dropped everything
and used some of my very precious gas money for the week to go to the
mall and pick it up. I listened to it in the car coming home and all
night and all this morning. It was truly anointed and God was speaking
in every song it seemed, not just about things in the moment but tying
so many things together that he has been speaking in recent months. God
had stepped into the room to speak to me in our language, our quirky
little way of conversing and discussing things.
yeah, so here are my notes from my prayer time, straight from my prayer journal...
Wake Up.
"I should have been finding you, but you were finding me," Jared Anderson.
That time of darkness, the difficult things/storms that so many have
walked thru recently, was like a time of not thinking clearly, of
sleeping, of rambling thoughts, of a nightmare. We were taken off guard
and the attack threw us into confusion and dulled our senses, lulled us
into a coma of sorts, caused us to be asleep and not using the
spiritual weapons in our hands.
But God was with us,
shaking us, calling our name to wake us up, snap out of it, pulling us
from the darkness back into the Light, into Truth, into Hope, and the
Promises of God.
A right spirit.
"Where did faith come from?" Jared.
It never left us.
He was there all along <3
Then I felt like the Lord told me to go to Psalm 48.
Not knowing what it said, I was amazed not only how the passage applied
but with the devotion that expounded on this specific psalm.
1 Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise,
in the city of our God, his holy mountain.
2 It is beautiful in its loftiness, the joy of the whole earth.
Like the utmost heights of Zaphon is Mount Zion,
the city of the Great King.
3 God is in her citadels;
he has shown himself to be her fortress.
4 When the kings joined forces,
when they advanced together,
5 they saw her and were astounded;
they fled in terror. (Psalm 48:1-5)
Devotion: Brennan Manning/ Max Lucado Bible (p.647)
... to discern where you really are with the Lord, recall what has
saddened you recently. Was it the realization that you don't love Jesus
enough?... That you can't honestly say that the greatest thing that
ever happened to your life is that Jesus came to you and you heard His
voice?...
or have you been saddened and depressed over a
lack of human respect, criticism from an authority figure, financial
problems, lack of friends, your bulging waistline?
on the
other hand, what has gladdened you recently? Reflection on your
election to the Christian communinty?... The afternoon you stole away
with the Goispel as your only companion? The thrilling awareness that
God loves you unconditionally just as you are and not as you should
be?...
When our lives are governed not by a network of laws
but by the fire of the Spiriti that burns within... when we respond to
the call of Jesus, which is not, "Come to the ice cream party," but
"Come to Me," then the limitless power of the Holy Spirit will be
unleashed with astonishing force....
"I will declare the beauty of the Lord1" Jared.
I continued in prayer and worship and began to pray the lyrics
"you take my breath away..."
I remembered hearing this lyric last night in the car and was a little
confused by it then as well, not by the lyric itself, but by the
anointing that it seemed to carry -- and yet how it seemed to be the
exact opposite thing that the Lord had been speaking about BREATHE. I
began asking the Lord about it. I asked why his presence was resting on
that lyric, why he would stop our breath, why he would stop us from
uttering his name... and then I literally held my breath for some
reason as I waited for him to explain.
And as I became desperate for air, to breathe again, I realized why....
I began to cry because I was so moved by what I felt God was saying.
Sometimes he allows the storm and the difficulty so that we lose our
breath. Such things allow us to glimpse the reality of life without
him, of the pain and the threat of death, life without God... the
second and eternal death.
We become desperate. We realize
our need of Him. We become passionate about Him. Suddenly breath
becomes our focus. We WAKE UP. We become aware of the one shaking us
and restoring our senses. We become aware of those around us that are
breathing or not breathing. We begin to talk about breathing and not
breathing because we are suddenly aware of just how important it is.
We are desperate that others around us are breathing or not. We notice
them, we pay attention to their well being. We see the urgency of
helping them to breathe again. To shock them. To pound their chest. To
clear their airway. To invade their personal space, to get messy, to
take chances, to risk much. Suddenly we are willing to do the
unthinkable, the unappealing, the disgusting, whatever it takes...
mouth to mouth, intimacy, breathing into them in hopes that they will
breathe again. A reflection of our God, breathing life. Desperate for
their salvation as much as our own.
12These men are
blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest
qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain,
blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice
dead. 13They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame;
wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
14Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: "See, the
Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15to
judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts
they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly
sinners have spoken against him." 16These men are grumblers and
faultfinders (complainers); they follow their own evil desires; they
boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.
17But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus
Christ foretold. 18They said to you, "In the last times there will be
scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires." 19These are the
men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have
the Spirit.
20But you, dear friends, build yourselves up
in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. 21Keep yourselves
in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to
bring you to eternal life.
22Be merciful to those who
doubt; 23snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show
mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted
flesh. (Jude 1:12-23)
Your storm, your suffering, your darkness will end.
But don't miss the fact that it has a purpose. God never allows us to
go thru anything without some greater blessing in mind. No matter what
is stolen from us, no matter how it scars us, no matter how long we
must endure... there is a greater good that will result. And the
violence of that dark time will seem so small when we look back on that
thing that once tormented us. God has promised. Keep looking forward,
never focussing on what is behind.
The storm wakes us up,
it keeps us aware and our senses keen. Yes sometimes it can take our
breath away, but a choice remains for us to make. Do we hold our breath
because of fear, and then die. Or do we hold our breath in awe of our
God, and live a more desperate, passionate Life.
Our purpose on this earth is to fulfill the Commission.
If we refuse to wake up and focus, God will allow us to be shaken until
we do. We must wake up and breathe, to think clearly in an urgent hour
of the church, to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, breathing life
into those who have lost their breath.
That is the will of the Father, that is who He is, our Daddy, our Breath, our Life.
