Spirit of Wisdom, Open My Eyes

One of the strangest parts of this discipleship training school has been the whole concept of prophecy. From day one, I knew that God 100% wanted me to be here, so I dove wholeheartedly into everything that was placed before me, desiring to learn all that God could hope to teach me. Part of that journey has been the prophetic, which I don't recall questioning much, although I do remember wondering how anybody ever got anything and what it all meant. I guess when you read the Bible for what it's worth, it's hard to avoid the reality of prophecy, so that wasn't really an issue for me. It was more how to go about it that I struggled with.

I'm not saying that I'm anything more than an infant in this area, but I do think that what little I have learned about hearing God and discerning His heart has made a significant difference in how I relate to people. As someone whose #2 on the strengthsfinder test was "individualization," I already have the natural ability to recognize and call out traits in others with at least a decent degree of proficiency. Add prophecy into the mix, and it's kind of overwhelming. I guess... It's hard to explain without sounding like I'm being arrogant. I don't think I am, but...

This weekend, I had the interesting experience of meeting someone, getting a word for them that I still believe to be true, but then also spending a brief period of time with them that was long enough to get a sense from absolutely nothing they directly said or did about who they were. I even had a rather strange dream regarding that person. On this side of things, I have seen at least a little confirmation of my previous impressions, and I am almost tempted to think that the word was for my benefit more than for that person.

I'm thankful that God is eager to share His heart, because if I just went off of my gut instincts, I suspect I would be very arrogant and suspicious. But we are all works in progress and He is gloriously up to the task of transforming our understanding so that we first see the 10 in others and then the progress.

All of which is to say... Nothing very inspiring, really. Except, y'know, that I freak myself out sometimes.

A Lavish Offering

It was just another 3AM set at just another twelve hour burn midway through the year. The night was chilly and though I had awoken earlier than I planned, it turned out to be a good thing because I was able to drive Elizabeth back to Green Street after she had gotten accidentally stranded at the Life Center. By the time I returned, Lucas and Sam were halfway through their nightwatch set. I didn't really know what to expect and so had no great expectations, but it was bare moments in before I was flooded with the love and presence of God.

When I'm 82, let it be said of me, "He wasted his life on Jesus."


No fragrant perfume this, but a far more costly sacrifice. One year's wages can little compare to a whole life's years. It is almost a silly word to use in that context... "waste." But it demonstrates perfectly the extravagance of love, that giddy desire to give more than sensibility or society dictates to be entirely... well, proper.

I remembered those moments some two months later when Levi Miller led our afternoon prayer room set during a quick visit. It's kind of an understatement to say that he is an intense guy, but in the middle of the raw worship (and broken guitar strings), he flowed into Phillips, Craig, and Dean's Pour My Love On You. Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere shifted into that strangely familiar tone of lovesick devotion, the kind that is willing to pledge itself to a "wasted life."

Like oil upon Your feet
Like wine for You to drink
Like water from my heart
I pour my love on You...
With praises like perfume
I lavish mine on You
Til every drop is gone,
I pour my love on You...


I know what C.S. Lewis says in his Letters to Malcolm about setting up a standard by focusing on our ideal moment and then missing the blessing of all the lesser but still precious moments after. Still, I want that passion burning in my heart and soul, to live out with a laid down life the words that tore themselves one by one from my throat. It doesn't feel as romantic, as tragically glorious once you leave the prayer room, but He is there always, drawing me away to be with Him in the secret place even in the middle of a busy day, even with the briefest fall of eyelids to remember and whisper love. Til every drop is gone...

You Are My Hope

After last night's tossing and turning and getting thoroughly enmeshed in the sleeping bag, I'm rather tired and not entirely sure how to say what's in my head and on my heart. I've been doing and learning so much that sometimes it all just piles up until I'm almost afraid to open the floodgates for fear that I'll drown in the deluge of my own musings.

These past few days have been especially difficult (sorry! I am apparently too happy and outwardly focused to write when I'm actually having an easy, breezy time in life) for reasons of their own, but this morning I opened up to my daily reading in Psalm 31 and was drawn to verse 24.

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
All you who hope in the Lord.


I find it so, SO easy to wallow in my own miseries, misfortunes, and failures. I'm still learning how to walk in the balance of recognizing my sinfulness in the light of God's holiness but also humbly receiving His grace and love that have sanctified and are sanctifying me. Humility is such a beautiful characteristic when someone actually walks in it, and it is such a sweet thing to be able to receive from the Lord. Part of the difficulty I have been facing is simply the oh-so-easy downward spiral of navel gazing that forgets the purpose of outreach and even of life, which is to glorify God and make His name known throughout the earth, and focuses instead on some too slowly evolving inward landscape that can only become beautiful when it is left to the master gardener Himself. As I have been fixating on my flaws, I have felt weak and ineffective, willing to do what is on the schedule because I have no choice, but gradually shriveling up inside.

Last night was sweet though, like a refreshing breeze blown in off of the sea. It was the end of a long day, with daily morning team time, then evangelism, a game of Ultimate Frisbee, a hastily consumed dinner of tacos, and an evening youth service/ministry time, wrapped up at last with a worship gathering at the African-American Center on Yale's campus. I hadn't even really had much of a quiet time that morning because I was exhausted and frustrated, so by the time we got to the 10PM worship I was flagging.

We talked once about the tendency of binding things in the prayer room or during worship, then walking right out of that room and loosing them once again. That's kind of what I felt was happening between the early evening ministry time when I had some personal breakthrough even while praying and prophesying over high school students, then lost my grasp of it five minutes after we walked out the door. By the time we reached Yale, I was ready to curl up in Daddy's lap and cry on His shoulder for a while. The eternal question: how do we walk in what we have received when the revelation is so contrary to established habits and thought patterns?

But always, at the moment beyond hope, God sends His messengers to whisper, "Be strong, and let your heart take courage..." Our hope is fixed on a firm foundation that the storms of life cannot shake. He is so good to me, and I will rest in Him.

The Precipice

As is not uncommon for me, I have the lines of a song wending their way through my head. Today's song is, thankfully, NOT Rebecca Black's whatever it's called about weekends. Thanks to the guys on my team, I have been having flashbacks to middle school for the past several days, and they aren't the enjoyable kind.

One of the most startling things about the past few days has just been the realization that life is not what it used to be. I am doing things that I have never done before, and while I don't want to act like street evangelism is the easiest thing in the world... It's not like it used to be.

Derrik and I were at The Harvard Co-Op asking God for words for people, and we happened to be sitting in front of the Religion section. As I waited for our one small notebook, I glanced at some of the titles, my eye settling briefly on Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. That book just so happens to be the one that I picked up at Borders two days before dts began while I was waiting for Hayden to show up at the Olive Garden for our last meeting before I was whirled away to Harrisburg. And even as I thought back to that day, as monumental and insane as my life seemed then, I am struck by how dramatically it seems to have changed. We joke about "paradigm shifts," as if they were an everyday occurrence, not realizing at times how dramatically such a shift has actually taken place over these past several months.

There is something about spending crazy amounts of time in the presence of God and in an amazing community that challenges and supports me in ways that I could never have expected. Somewhere along the line, you start realizing that some sacrifices are not too great to make, that some personal freedoms that we have come to expect are really just our selfishness getting in the way of an amazing relationship, and that our God is worth every second of life regardless of the circumstances.

Sorry, I don't really have time to wrap up my ramblings, but I also have to take care of college stuff! Insanity... :S

Something's Always Falling... Glory? Snow?

It's the second day of spring, but thanks to Boston's present weather conditions, you would be hard put to know it. Mondays are our days off: that is, if you can ever really take a break from the process of learning a lifestyle of evangelism. From where I sit at The Thinking Cup just off Boston Common, I can see mostly snow and not many people braving the wet and chilly weather. Thankfully, it's warmer inside with a mug of chai and a cozy atmosphere, although by some strange quirk of coffee shop world, they do not have free WiFi. Obviously I have been exposed to Starbucks for too long because my system has no cushion for such a shocking circumstance. Nonetheless, The Thinking Cup boasts more than enough ambience and amiability (not to mention its tempting menu which is almost entirely off limits to me at present) to make up for its deplorable lack of internet access. Oh, and the barista gave me a little tutorial on new coffee gadgets like a press that is a cross between a full immersion (french press-style) coffee, a pour through, and espresso. I like this place.

We have been here for two weeks, and in some ways they seem almost like a dream. The ride here was not terribly chaotic or anything, just eight, blessedly uneventful hours packed into a 13 passenger van with the Washington, D.C. team and one other member of my own. Being the smallest group with six people, we have the prized fate of being divided whenever we need transportation anywhere. In a sort of free-spirited protest, all six of us have gained a fierce affection for public transportation that no glance at Boston's T system of buses and subways could explain. There is something to being together and independent that makes up for any inconvenience.

But I digress. Since that first day, we have gone through the tumult of moving into YWAM Boston housing, moving out, staying two nights at a church, staying one night at another church, being somewhat rudely awoken and hastened out only to move back into YWAM housing where we have at last had the opportunity to heave a sigh of relief and settle into our surroundings until March 31^st, when three fourths of our school will be traveling to New Haven, Connecticut, for part two of outreach at Yale.

Our days are a somewhat helter skelter mix of team worship and devotions, meals (which have had ample opportunity to assert themselves as a most obnoxious concession to physical necessity), afternoons of evangelism, Bible studies, Christian fellowships, amazing intercession sets at Justice House of Prayer, and the occasional side trip to chase down someone on crutches. One of the things we were well informed of in advance is that plans are always subject to change. Often at the last moment. Often due to unforeseeable circumstances, as when one of our team leaders, Elizabeth, had to go to the emergency room last Thursday.

In the midst of all of this, God has been teaching me so much. It is hard to explain how difficult the first week here was, but I didn't even quite realize it then because I think I was in a merciful state of shock. We talked about how three months of outreach means a fairly significant amount of crucifying one's flesh, but I didn't expect the reality of that to be learning how to live with twelve other girls in close quarters with one bathroom or reeling at the odd hours of night clashing with my early, early morning person self or re-learning what it means to walk in the presence of God when you're not regularly in the prayer room on your face before Him.

Still, He is so faithful through all of that. I am reminded of one of Mandela's lines in the movie “Invictus,” when he speaks to Francois Pienaar about the difficulty of stirring men to be greater than they think they are. I like to think that God is in that business. Late this past Saturday evening, I was talking with my teammate Joy about the various personalities that make up our team. She was wrestling a little bit with some difficulty she was having with one or two other people, and I mentioned that one of the things that helps me (having come head to head with the same quirks) is simply to recognize that our capacity for grace arises out of our ability to recognize that the weaknesses we wrestle with or are offended by in others are actually their greatest strengths undergoing the grueling process of refinement. For instance, Joy had the realization that each of us fits into a five-fold ministry slot. One of our teammates is inarguably the evangelist, and he's great at it. But as he also mentioned recently, he is a verbal processor who is determined to share every revelation he gets and to make sure that his audience understands fully. This has very practical benefits while evangelizing, but sometimes it means that he cannot stop himself from talking overlong, and he has had to ask for both forgiveness and grace. We are happy to give it, not because we want him to stay where he's at, but because we are willing to fight for his destiny and to see him become a better person as God takes him through that refining fire.

Another serious area of growth has been in the evangelistic process. Last Saturday, we teamed up in pairs and wandered around Harvard Yard, striking up conversations with people about Jesus. Derrik and I had quite a few mishaps, from the Wilderness Survival First Aid class (the guy with the makeshift splint on his leg was not injured or in need of healing prayer) to the guy who led Derrik on a merry chase across campus to say that he thought Jesus was “a cool guy with some good quotes” and that “he didn't really talk about his religion” (to which I wanted to reply, “What are you, 32^nd level Freemason?!”) and then hurried off. After eleven brush offs and rejections of various types (the busy people, the “I-don't-talk-about-religion” people, the “pray for someone who needs it” people, or the guy who had a cross tattooed on his thigh and thought that would be his pass into heaven), Derrik and I finally saw an hour and a half of freezing persistence pay off in a twenty minute conversation with a girl named Erika. First, I want to say that she did not convert. BUT we believe that we are part of a process and we meet people at every stage of plowing, sowing, and reaping. Erika identifies herself most closely with Wicca, ascribing to a sort of Pocahantas-inspired pantheism. She thinks God doesn't exist but Jesus was an interesting historical figure with probable political ties, and she believes in reincarnation and the existence of pain and suffering as part of a necessary progression of lessons that our souls must learn before they reach a state of perfection and can enter into whatever afterlife there may be. Over the course of our conversation with her, we got to share some of our hearts with her and at least introduce the idea that there might be more to Jesus than she at first thought. We prayed for her, prophesied over her, and encouraged her to pick up a Bible again. Derrik suspected there might be some of what Sammy would call nar-nar spiritual stuff going on with her, mostly because she seemed to see-saw between genuine interest and engagement to a dramatic shut down when Derrik offered her a New Testament.

On Thursday afternoon, while Nick and Elizabeth were at the emergency room so that she could get blood tests and fluid, the four of us (Tyler, Derrik, Joy, and myself) went to Harvard Yard and spent an hour talking with people. It was a beautiful day, and although Harvard has been on Spring Break for the past week, we actually were able to find people who were students rather than tourists. The first guy, Gary, said he was a Christian, although I now wish we had stayed and talked with him a little more. The second guy was possibly staff or faculty and he told us to go away because “Jesus is not his friend and we should go talk to someone else. End of story.” The next guy, Cory, is an Indonesian student in his freshman year. He is a Buddhist, but not necessarily raised so. He said that through Buddhist meditation, he was healed from an ailment as a child, and he still prays to Buddha regularly, believing that he actually communicates with him. Derrik and I shared some of the shortcomings of Buddha, specifically that Jesus actually dealt with the issue of sin in the world and takes our judgment on himself, but Cory, for all his refreshing openness in talking about his religion, preferred to steer away from that discussion. I prayed for him (with his permission), and Derrik got his email address, so I don't think that's the end of the story.

What these stories illustrate to me more than anything is that there will always be rejection. But ultimately, I do not have to take the brunt of rejection into myself and revel in discouragement. The people who refuse Jesus are not rejecting me: they don't even know me. They are rejecting Jesus and the gift of grace that he embodied on the cross. I can't be offended on his behalf, and I'm finding that these days it does more to break my heart than my sense of self. And when we push through the rejections and the discomforts, God grants us incredible opportunities to meet and share with the ones who ARE hungry to know more of Him.

I apologize if I have been too wordy or tangential, and if you just want testimonies, we saw a guy with a torn rotator cuff doing push ups in a coffee shop, a Jewish girl converted, and a new Christian brought into a discipleship relationship. We've had opportunities to encourage and prophesy over future governmental leaders at Harvard Law, we've prayed for a homeless man who struggled with alcoholism but feels that God is calling him to pastoral ministry, and we even got into a conversation about the nature of healing with a guy on the T who let us pray for his knee with a certain amount of skepticism. We've spent some very cold hours evangelizing, had people approach us instead of the other way around (perfect opportunity for evangelism), and had wild, spontaneous intercession times with newfound friends in Harvard Yard.

The more time we spend here, the more I am coming to realize the reality of Ephesians 3:20 with its message of God's infinite power to work beyond our imaginings through us. The God who created and sustains the universe chooses to partner with weak, finite man in order to see His purposes brought about on the earth. What an honor it is, and what a joy to walk in fellowship with the only One who can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts.

Thank you all for your support, both in getting me here financially and in praying for me and my team over the course of our outreach. I am so privileged to be here, and I can't even believe that I get to do this for eight more weeks. Prayer requests at this point are: affordable housing in Oxford, health for Elizabeth who has a mix of medical maladies, and lasting discipleship relationships formed out of our time here at Harvard and upcoming at Yale. We have already seen so much fruit, but we still have so far to go.