Tag Archives: wilderness

what if i could see what i can’t see

He was a man with a promise. She was a slave with a son. His son. But the promise won, and she and her son had to go because Sarah let the hammer fall. “Drive out this slave with her son, for the son of this slave will not be a coheir with my son Isaac!”

And I wonder if Abraham’s heart broke that day. Did he cry? Did he wish there could be some other way? Did it leave a hole in him that nothing would ever fill?

Surely he loved his son the way we love ours.

And then the water was gone and a slave-turned-mother couldn’t keep her son alive. And I wonder if she was just undone with sadness and grief and resentment over a life she didn’t choose.

Maybe choices others made for her broke her, the way they break us.

“So as she sat nearby, she wept loudly”.

She couldn’t watch him die and I can’t blame her one bit, but I want to blame someone. Sarah. Abraham. God? Maybe. Because dying children is the big unfair and someone has to take the blame for a mother’s loud weeping.

But God heard. And in this dark story, light breaks in. When God hears our weeping and speaks to a heart that’s been split wide open, something lifts. Hope comes near again.

But none of that is the point. This is the reason I sat down here–

“Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.”

She saw what she hadn’t seen before – what would change her mourning into dancing and make her weep loud with joy.

She saw hope and goodness and provision and life because He opened her eyes.

And I wonder.

What would I see if God opened my eyes?

What if my thirst has been seen and my well is already there? What if healing and hope and love and provision and comfort are all right there on the other side of the veil, waiting for my eyes to open? What if a well in the desert isn’t hard for God? What if my impossibles aren’t impossible at all?  What if my longings are known and what if my search could be over?

What if He opened my eyes and I saw what’s been there all along.

Genesis 21:8-19

i will not die in this place

desert-campingI had a vague sense of what God was calling me to this year, but it was just that. Vague. Wispy. Fragile.

But I knew He was calling. I could hear His voice. Ever have that? You know He’s speaking, but you can’t make out the words? Like the wind picks them up and carries them off before they can reach your heart.

Until you draw closer. Until you get up from your wilderness spot where you’ve set up camp and head toward the sound of the voice that makes the hunger in you start to gnaw.

Until you get close enough to realize He’s saying the last thing you expected to hear.

“So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” 

Third chapter of Hebrews hit me like a brick in the back of the head. Those people who seem so far removed from me wandered in their wilderness until they died because they did not believe God.

I had stopped believing (cue Journey song. In your head. All day. You’re welcome).

And from the book of Hebrews His voice rose to meet my weary hunger. “Wilderness wandering is not your destiny. It is not what I had for them, and it is not what I have for you. 

Do you believe Me?”

20140105_072642So I went to the place where my belief was safely tucked away. Fifteen or so journals filled with the cries of a heart that believed God.

20140105_072543

I read and remembered and cried because I don’t know what happened.

I read and remembered that my life is proof that God hears and God moves.

I read and remembered that all things are possible with God.

I read and remembered what I believe.

And I don’t know if I came out of the wilderness, or if He tired of calling me and came in after me. 

All I know is His voice is clear, His call for me this year is certain, no longer vague and wispy, lost in the hot wind of my wilderness.

This year, I will pray again with boldness and passion. I will ask Him for impossibles because I believe all things become possible in His hand.

I will pray for those I love who do not walk with Him to have knock down encounters with the living God. Encounters that leave no room for doubt that Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior and that the danger to their soul does not pass with magic words but with knees that bow and necks that bend.

I will pray for marriages to be restored and not just restored but made brand new.

I will pray that depression and despair pack their bags and depart from the Beloved and that the door hits them firm on their way out.

I will pray for the broken to be healed, the chained to be set free and the lukewarm to be set on fire.

prodigal-son

I will pray for prodigals to come to their senses and come running home to a Father that is waiting to kiss their neck.

woman warrior

I will pray for power from on high to come upon the Bride of Christ and make her into the formidable foe to darkness that she is meant to be.

I will pray because I believe God moves and the spiritual realm shifts to attention when the people of God cry out from the faith He has given them.

I will not pray from a place of desperation or resignation. I will not utter words from my lips while my heart remains silent in unbelief.

I will not pray for what is possible for man, but for what is only possible for an all powerful God who sits on the throne of heaven with His feet on the footstool of earth.

This year, I will pray because I believe God.

This year, I will not die in the wilderness.