Waiting

I'm waiting
I'm waiting on You, Lord
And I am hopeful
I'm waiting on You, Lord
Though it is painful
But patiently, I will wait

I will move ahead, bold and confident
Taking every step in obedience
While I'm waiting
I will serve You
While I'm waiting
I will worship
While I'm waiting
I will not faint
I'll be running the race
Even while I wait

I'm waiting
I'm waiting on You, Lord
And I am peaceful
I'm waiting on You, Lord
Though it's not easy
But faithfully, I will wait
Yes, I will wait
I will serve You while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting
I will serve You while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting
I will serve you while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting on You, Lord

When nothing seems to be happening, when I don’t have plans, when I don’t have commitments, I get caught up in thinking that God isn’t answering my prayers. I tell him I am ready to make a move in HIS name, I am ready to do BIG things in his name. I have the time now Lord, why aren’t you showing me where you want me to go, what you want me to do? Why are you silent? Where are you!? Hello? God? Just give me something! Often, the only thing I accomplish is hours spent worrying, wondering, what is going on, what can I do? This song lays it out. We all crave action, we crave quick answers and results, we crave chaos. When we lose patience and try to do things on our own, God leads us into the desert, just as he led the Israelites into the desert, so that we learn to worship, trust him, and serve him in every situation. He wants us to be patient. Commitment and faith is serving, loving, sacrificing, even when we aren’t getting anything in return. That is what he wants from us. We are not guaranteed anything here on this earth. As long as we accept his gift of salvation and forgiveness we ARE guaranteed an eternity with him in Heaven.

Today I pray that I can serve, that I can worship, that I can be content and excited to be waiting for God's perfect timing and his plan.

Healing Begins

So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you're good
And you can't believe it's not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside

So let 'em fall down
There's freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We're here now

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

Afraid to let your secrets out
Everything that you hide
Can come crashing through the door now
But too scared to face all your fear
So you hide but you find
That the shame won't disappear

So let it fall down
There's freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We're here now
We're here now, oh

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don't fight
This coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

I love how God speaks to me through music and how he uses some extremely talented musicians to teach and to introduce himself to people.

This song is one that really struck a chord with me today. I feel like I move through the world and the “stuff” that I encounter daily causes me to be filled with pride, selfishness, anger, hatred, laziness, and indifference. Despite how much I try to remain positive, and hopeful, I feel that negativity, the schemes of Satan sticking to me. It’s almost like I am walking through streets full of wet tar and every step I take I collect more and more gunk and it gets heavier and heavier. At the same time, I am embarrassed by the crud that has collected in my heart and my pride causes me to build up walls to make my life look “clean” and shiny. Before long the walls I have built up are so big that the only way to truly CLEAN my life is for me to let GOD lead my heart and to let GOD clean me from the inside out. God’s spirit is telling me the whole time that I need to change, that I need to confess, that I need to accept forgiveness. But pride can be a stubborn obstacle. Because we become so blind to God’s truth, grace, mercy and forgiveness it often takes something BIG to shatter the walls and to get our attention. God breaks us, he allows us to experience pain and suffering so that we run out of ideas and strategies to alleviate the suffering on our own.

In Every Man, God’s Man Steve Arturburn says, “God knows all our moves, and HIS desire to pin us down comes out of HIS great desire to get close to us, not destroy us or gain some sort of victory. When God can’t get through to us by our conscience, he sometimes uses crises in our lives, our close relationships, our business ventures, our careers, our health, and our families to bring us to a place nothing else could. A desperate place… He knows most men will not change until the pain of their circumstance exceeds the pain of change.”

In this song, I love the verse:

Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don't fight
This coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us

The thought that SPARKS FLY as God tries to change us on the inside, as HE wages the battle with darkness is AWESOME! Change can be violent, it isn’t always pretty. God doesn’t wave his wand over us and we are fixed. SPARKS FLY. Keep in mind, even this type of change can’t happen if we don’t first believe that Jesus died and bled on the cross for me. He saved me from my sin and his blood washes all that tar, all that gunk away.

So I am a sinner, God will cleanse me of my sins, but many times before we are willing to let that happen, God gets our attention through pain. This is where my prayer today comes from. God right now is trying to get my attention. He is allowing me to experience the pain of a broken heart in VERY small doses. He is warning me that I need to give my life 100% to him. My prayer is that he makes this change in my heart and that I take notice before he has to resort to more dramatic measures to get my attention.

Hebrews 12:11 (NLT) says “No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening- it is painful! But afterward there will be a quiet harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.”