God is Gold...literally. (Part II)

Click here for Part I

WHOA. 

That's the God I serve. 

That's the God that loves ME! 

My worship of Him is not so that I get tingly feelings, but to praise Him for His unimaginable holiness.
I don't come to Him to get things, feelings, or supernatural experiences.
I come to Him to get Him.

I don't come to him based on whether or not He is showing up in cool ways.

I come to Him to worship. 

I come to Him to simply stand in awe of His presence. 

He is Holy, Holy, Holy. 

A Holy I can't even fathom or explain.

Duh, Lauren! 

So, as I sat in reverence of God I just prayed to enter into His presence and worship.
No strings attached.
No expectations or limits.
Just worship.
Because He's WORTHY.

And after quite a while I put away my books and decided to go to bed.
I walked to the bathroom and took out my contacts and I got what I thought was a head rush.
Gold sparkles started falling all around me and I blinked several times to clear my vision thinking I was seeing things.

But the gold continued to fall.
I jumped back from the counter and started looking around the bathroom.
Gold sparkles were falling everywhere.

WHAT?!  Who does that?! Who shows up in gold dust?!
God. That's who.

I stretched out my hands thinking some would land in my palms, but it just fell through.
So, I just stood there...completely unsure of what to do.
I honestly wish you could have seen this scene play out. I'm sure it was pretty entertaining!

And after maybe thirty seconds or so, the gold dust stopped falling and not a drop of it was left.
....and I just kept standing there....still totally unsure of what had just happened.
I walked out of the bathroom and had a conversation with my roommate that went something like this:

Me: "Clarissa..."
Clarissa: "Yea?"
Me: Uhmm...
Clarissa: "Yea?"
Me:..........................
Clarissa: "Lauren?"
I tried to come up with some words that didn't make me sound absolutely crazy, but nothing came to mind, so I just turned around and walked back into the bathroom.
Clarissa: "Okay. Nice chat!"

I was literally dumbstruck.
I had no words.
God just showed up as sparkly gold dust....
....after I had just told Him that I wanted to worship Him for who He was, not the things, feelings, or experiences that He could give me.
What would you say??

Moral of this story: God does what He wants, when He wants, and how He wants.
He is Holy, Holy, Holy and He deserves my absolute adoration every second of every day.

If you're looking to experience God's supernatural abilities, my best advice for you is this: STOP.
Stop looking for what God can do for you and start worshipping him- simply worshipping who He is, how holy and deserving and wonderful He is.
In the words of one of the incredible speakers at Urbana, David Platt, "We don't come to Jesus to get things, we come to Jesus to get Jesus."

God is Gold...literally. (Part I)

Lately I've been on a journey of pursuing God in the supernatural.
The more I read the bible, the less I understand Him...and I LOVE it!
I want a God that I can't explain, define, or limit, and, for so long I have been able to do all of those things.

Like I said, I have been pursuing God in His realm instead of mine, but for the last few weeks I felt like I wasn't seeing much of Him.

I was also struggling with busyness.
School, work, and my social personality had taken me into a level of busyness that was distracting me from the King.
Yes, I lived my life for His glory and I adored Him with every breath I took, but I was failing to have intimate time with Him in prayer and in the Word.
I wasn't retreating and allowing Him to fill me because I had so many other things to do.

And then last weekend I was talking with Ruth Ann, an incredible woman of faith who is leading a small group for me and some other incredible women.
I was talking with her about wanting God to reveal Himself to me supernaturally. I didn't mention the fact that I had been struggling to spend intimate time with Him, but God gave her the perfect words to share with me.

"I think we'll start to see more of God in the supernatural when we start to develop an intimate relationship with Him that says, 'God, I know you can do whatever you want, whenever you want  to, and however you'd like and I just want to meet with you however you choose to reveal yourself."

Sometimes He might not show up with fire from Heaven or big booming words, but I assure you that He shows up.
He wants daily, intimate communion with you and me, even though we are all completely unworthy.

Through Ruth Ann's words I realized that the two strongest desires in my spiritual walk, intimacy with God and revelation of His supernatural power, were connected.

So, last week I refocused my goal.
Rather than pursuing God's supernatural power and revelation, I pursued Him....just Him...however He chose to reveal himself.

I grabbed my bible and the book I'm reading, Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and I intentionally sat down just to be intimate with God and to spend time with Him.
I've read the first few chapters of Crazy Love a million times, but I kept feeling God direct me back to chapter one.
So, I obeyed and the words of that chapter hit me with a fresh revelation.

Chapter one is focused on the fact that we can not and will not ever understand God.
We can not exaggerate Him.
We can not define Him.
He is beyond Holy.
Our words can't even describe Him because He is so Holy.

For the first time in my life I read Revelation four and it hit me.
That chapter in the bible describes the throne room of God.
If you need a good reality (or supernatural) check, here it is!

 After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.  And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.  Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.

And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures,each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

    who was and is and is to come!”

¹¹ 

    to receive glory and honor and power,

for you created all things,

    and by your will they existed and were created.”

 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,

for you created all things,

    and by your will they existed and were created.”

This blog entry is getting impossibly long...and I know how much everyone enjoys a good cliff hanger, so marinate on this verse and I will be back with more soon. 

Trust me, this story is just getting good. 

Just Let Me Speak...

There were so many more things that happened at Urbana and I just don't have enough space or time to write them all out. But, something incredible did come out of one of the many things that God laid on my heart during that conference.

After my encounter with the Holy Spirit (see previous posts for more on that story) I felt like God was continually putting it on my heart to speak. I didn't know how...or where...or when. But, I just had this constant feeling that He was going to be asking me to speak.

As I studied Acts I began to realize how many times it talks about people speaking boldly for Christ after being filled with the Holy Spirit and I continued to feel God laying that on my heart, "You will do that, too."
"Okay. Mhm. Whatever you say, God."

Maybe I shouldn't have been so sarcastic...

I was driving home several weeks ago to surprise my family. I love my two hour drives because it gives me uninterrupted time to just spend in God's presence. I was chatting with God about the upcoming conference being held at my church (Grace Christian Fellowship) and I was telling Him that I didn't think I would go this year.
I felt like it was going to be at a bad time.
It was more for a younger age demographic.
Eh, just not for me this year.

And when I got done telling God my plans, He let me in on His,
"You're going to go and you are going to speak in a revolving door session." (revolving door sessions are where four speakers each get seven minutes to speak before an air horn goes off and the next person comes up to speak.)

I chuckled and chalked that thought up to a miscommunication between God and I.
Surely that was just a passing thought.
Surely they had already planned out who their speakers were going to be since the conference was only a few weeks away.
Maybe God meant next year....

A few hours later I got online, only to find a message asking me to speak in a revolving door session for the upcoming conference.
Welp, I guess God knew what He was talking about after all!

So, obviously, I agreed.
And then I began preparing.

Little factoid about me: I love to write, and I've been told time and time again that I do well at it. I can write speeches that have you in tears or in stitches, or, on a good day, both. I say that not to boast, but just to give you some background in the fact that writing and delivering speeches has been a gifting of mine.

So, I began preparing.
I sat down to write out an incredibly well put together speech that would captivate the audience.
But, every time I went to put my pen to paper I was taken back to Acts and all the stories in which people were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke boldly without any preparation or forethought.
This nagging feeling started to creep up into my heart, but I tried to brush it aside.

"God, I could do a really good job with this if You'd just let me prepare!"
"But, then who's power would you be relying on? Yours or Mine?"

Phooey.
This wasn't going as planned.
I sat down a few more times throughout the next few weeks, trying to plan out what I was going to say...but every time I did I heard God tell me simply, "Just let Me speak."

I wrestled with Him a little longer before finally relenting.
"God, I won't plan. You can speak. But, please...just give me words so I don't stand up there like a fool with nothing to say."

And that He did.

It came to the morning I was supposed to speak and I looked at my empty journal.
"God, I don't doubt you...BUT, I'm just going to jot a few thoughts down on this page in case I get up there and don't have anything to say."
So I wrote down a few notes and tried to piece together what I was going to say.
I was a little nervous to say the least.
Going into something like this unprepared was just not me...but I think that was the point.

Just before the revolving door session began, we worshipped to the song Whom Shall I Fear by Chris Tomlin.
Incredible song!
If you haven't heard it...you need to! Click here to enjoy it.

The lyrics started to resonate in my heart:
I know who goes before me. 
I know who stands behind. 
The God of angel armies is always by my side. 
The one who reigns forever. 
He is a friend of mine. 
The God of angel armies is always by my side...

In that moment God flooded my mind with a vision of angels pouring down the walkway to the stage and then covering the stage with their light. To my left stood General God who looked at me and said, "I've already claimed this stage for you. You have all you need and nothing to fear."

Okay, God. Let's do this.
My turn came, and I took the mic with nothing in my head and a few words scratched out in my notebook.
I took the stage, sat my things down....and I silently shot God a prayer, "Okay. I'm ready for your words."
And I began to speak...and speak...and speak some more.
I'm pretty sure I could have gone on for hours.
At one point, I looked at my notebook to see if I was saying anything I had written down and it was simply gibberish.
So, I just kept moving my mouth and praying that God would keep talking.

I prayed.
And I left the stage.
And I couldn't believe God's goodness.

As I watched it back a few days later I couldn't help but think,
Man, that was good...but I could have said it better and more powerfully had I prepared.

And then God spoke to me through scripture.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5 says:

When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power. 

So, I'm learning to lean on the power of the Spirit and not on my own gifts and abilities.
I think there will come a time in which God is going to use my gifts to enhance the work of the Spirit, but I've relied solely on myself for too long and it's time to be completely dependent on Him for a change.

So, I'm learning to get out of the way.
I'm learning to let Him work, speak, and do as He pleases...and, unfortunately, it's not always the most comfortable route.
But, I guess God never promised that dying to oneself would be easy or pain free.
He did, however, promise that it would be worth it.

So, each day I die to myself a little more.
And, let me tell you, it's a painful process.

But, it ends in a beautiful victory of a Spirit filled daughter of God.

The Holy Spirit and....me? (Part III)

God had my attention.
I was His.

And I wanted more.
I wanted so much more!

As I sat there continuing to pray with this lady...(sorry for continually referring to her as "lady". I don't remember her name, but to make her more personal we can call her Janice.)
So, Janice and I are continuing to pray together when I start to see something.

Red...
Orange...
A fire, maybe?
It was getting closer...
Yep! Definitely a fire.

Almost as if on cue, Janice says, "Lauren do you see anything?"
"Fire. I see fire."
Even though our eyes were still closed in prayer, I could almost hear her smile as she said, "Yea! That's the Holy Spirit! Let's keep praying."

So we did.
We prayed.
And the fire came down.
It swept over my head and the burning came with it.
Every part of me was burning.
Janice's hand was on my shoulder and I think I mumbled something along the lines of, "Your hand! It's burning me!"
She laughed and moved it higher...but nothing could stop the burning. Every where her hand went the burning went.

It wasn't painful, but it was consuming.
It was cleansing.
It was renewing.
It was God like I'd never experienced Him before.

I could barely catch my breath as I clung to a little wooden cross that Janice had placed in my hands earlier.
My lungs could hardly keep up.
I could barely hold myself upright.
Tears were flowing and my nose was running. (Sidenote: at some point, I'm pretty sure I felt someone wipe my nose- Hey! I never said this Holy Spirit thing was pretty!)

My mind left me and my spirit began to speak for itself in a way that I had never heard before. Syllables spilled from my mouth in a language only God could understand.
And I wanted more.
Oh, how I wanted more!

I can't tell you how long I was there for.
Minutes?
Hours?
I truly have no clue.
There was no concept of the outside world.
In those moments it was just Janice, Me, and God.

At some point the visions of fire died down and I sat up in my chair and looked at Janice with a look of pure amazement plastered across my face.
She sat there smiling back at me, and said, "Well it looks like you're not doing this on your own anymore! You were just baptized in the Holy Spirit!"

I wasn't even entirely sure what that meant, but I smiled- that was about all I could do at this point.
A guy came over and sat and talked with me for a while about what it meant to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. He explained to me all the things that the Holy Spirit does, and then he said to me, "Do you know how to hear the voice of God?"
"Umm..well, I've practiced journaling His voice and, ummm...."
"No," he said, "that's good, but if you asked God a question right now would He answer you?"
"No, I guess not."
"Okay, I want you to close your eyes."
I shot him a skeptical glance, but did as he said.
"Now, I want you to ask God out loud what He thinks of you?"
I opened my eyes and looked him over with a questioning glare, but he just smiled and told me to do it.
Okay.
"God....what do you-" before the words even finished leaving my mouth an image of a rose came into my head and God began speaking so plainly through that single little flower. His words began flowing out of my mouth, bypassing my mind until my ears heard what I was saying. For several minutes God spoke and I sat there in awe of His power and love.
Then they explained to me what it meant to have a prophetic gift, and told me that God would be putting it into action.

And then they anointed me with oil.

Okay! So, to sum it all up we have...
Burning via an all consuming and imaginary fire: check!
Speaking in tongues: check!
Seeing prophetic visions: check!
Anointed with oil: check!
New revelation of God: check!

As I got up to leave the prayer room that day, I finally understood the words "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

Yea, this was definitely a new me.
And God wasn't done yet...

The Holy Spirit and....me? (Part II)

Is it possible?
All these years, had I been worshipping myself instead of God?

Lets evaluate.

Did I kill myself trying to fit pieces of my life together?
Yes. 
Did I think that the things I did or didn't do would determine God's love for me?
In my head, no....but my life reflected a clear yes. 
Was I a victim of severe anxiety whenever I wasn't enough for a situation?
Yea.... 
Did I secretly pride myself on who I was, where I'd come from, and what I'd done?
Unfortunately, yes....
Did I try endlessly to solve problems in my life and other people's lives in order to receive the glory instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to work in the problems and solve them for God's glory?
Ugh...definitely guilty.

Drat.
This lady was on to something.

All of sudden the reality of this unrecognized sin I had been living in became all too clear and I doubled over in repentance before God.
How dare I.
All my life I'd been trying to make God look like me, when what I claimed to be doing was passionately seeking to look more like Him.

Tears came, my wind was gone, and all I could do was sit before God in absolute repentance.
God was so much more than I had ever even realized....or cared to realize, for that matter.
In that moment, and in these weeks that have followed, I realize how little I really know about God and how much I've made Him to look a lot like me.

One of the most sobering moments since that day at Urbana was when I was reading through Romans and came to Romans 9.  I know it's a little long, but read it. Its good stuff!

15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' " 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? 22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-- 

This doesn't sound like the God I used to know.
What happened to, "God loves each of His children the same"?
Would God- sweet, loving, Daddy God- really create men and intentionally harden their hearts just so that he could display His wrath??

I would have just skimmed over this verse before, but now...now, I reread it. I study it. I can't get enough of it.
Finally, God doesn't fit in my box.
Finally, I can't answer a question about Him.
Finally, I can't speak for Him.
And finally, I'm letting Him speak for Himself.

And the answer I feel like He's sharing with me is definitely not the one I would have chosen.
I hear God say,
"Yes.
Yes, I could do that.
I'm God.
I'm perfect in all my ways.
I am Almighty and Sovereign
and what I choose to do is perfect.
I could create objects just to display my wrath,
and I can and will do as I please.
And while you're on this earth,
you will never understand my ways."

Box? What box?
This God is one that just blew the box to shreds and is preparing to reveal Himself to me in a new way.
And. I. Can't. Wait.

So, back to the prayer room at Urbana....
I now realized that all these years I had been my own god,
and that I knew nothing about who God really was.
I had repented and emptied myself before God.
And now that I had died to myself, I needed something else to fill me.

And fill me, He did.



Stay tuned! The cliff hanger continues...

The Holy Spirit and....me? (Part I)

I believe in the Trinity.

Father. 

Son. 

Holy Ghost.

And, while I'm a big fan of two of the key players of that triangle, I've never known-or, for that matter, really cared to know- much about numero tres in that equation: the Holy Spirit.  

I guess that just goes to show that God's plans are not always the ones that I would choose...

A little bit of background:
A few months ago I decided to go to this little conference called Urbana. If you haven't heard of it...look it up here.
17,000 college students and recent grads.
One week.
Break out sessions.
Multiple incredible speakers.
Worship in languages from around the world.
God.

It all adds up to an incredible experience.
But, I didn't know all this...and when I decided to go I was a little less than excited. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why I decided to...
I'm not a big fan of big conferences.
I had to pay quite a bit of money.
I had to leave the day after Christmas.
I just wasn't that excited, I guess.
But, again, that just goes to show that God's plans are not always the ones that I would choose.

After driving through an incredibly rough winter storm one night and driving for seven hours the next day, I was sick and even less thrilled to be there than I had been before. I was with six other INCREDIBLE women (see the picture at the bottom for an accurate display of their incredibleness), and we went that night to the first session where the M.C. offered the disclaimer, "You will not leave this conference unchanged. The person you came in as is not the person you'll be when you leave."

Excuse me while I laugh in disagreement and mockery...
Ha.

They were funny.
Apparently they didn't know my circumstances.
Did I want God to show up and do dramatic and incredible things in my life?
Yep!
But He had never done so in the past, so God and I were on a strictly stationary basis in which neither of us did anything wild and crazy.
I worked really hard to be a good person for Him.
And we just loved each other...a lot.
That's it.

But, by day two things started to change.
I felt like I needed to take the afternoon off and not go to any breakout sessions, but instead spend some time in the prayer room.
I spent some time in the worship prayer room by myself, just praying and working through a lot of struggles that I've been facing for...well....pretty much my whole life.
And then I felt Him pushing me to the intercessory prayer room to pray through these issues with someone.

God was starting to get a little wild and crazy and I wasn't too thrilled about it, but I decided that I should probably do as He said. He had yet to lead me down any dimly lit back alleys, so I figured I'd be safe.

I went into the prayer room and sat down with a wonderfully sweet lady who helped me pray through a lot of struggles.
When it came down to the end of things I said something along the lines of,
"I know God is gracious.
  I know God is loving.
  I know God is here.
  But, that's the problem!
  I know all these things in my head,
  but that's where they stop.
  I don't feel God's love, grace, and presence.
  I will never reach what God wants me to be.
  I could give up everything and move to Africa to save God's suffering
  children,
  and still I wouldn't be enough.
  Nothing I do is ever going to be enough!"

This wonderfully patient and soft-spoken woman I had just unloaded on looked at me and said a few words that I will never, ever in my life forget,
"Lauren, I think maybe you need to repent of trying to be your own god."

Game changer.
Those few words struck a cord, and I felt the air leave my lungs as I marinated on what she had just said.

Stay tuned....this story is just getting good. :)

Today I Am Thankful...

A few days ago I was pretty thirsty, but I didn't have any bottled water.
I'm not a fan of the taste of the water from the sink, so I grumbled a little and then made some tea.
I got my tea and sat down to work on some homework, when an image flashed in my mind. It looked a little something like this:

All of a sudden I began remembering the tiny little hands at Jireh Orphanage that filled up these yellow jugs of water for everyone in their "house" (I'm not entirely sure that I would consider their tiny little cement buildings a house, but they did, so we will call it that). The cistern that collects rain water had gone dry and this was all they had to get fresh water. Each jug took about forty five minutes to an hour to fill, and there were over 200 children that needed water to drink, bathe, and cook. 

Since when did I become so spoiled that I can't even drink a glass of tap water? 

And then...

Yesterday morning I was eating a piece of bread that had gone slightly stale, and in my typical picky way I made a look of disgust and got ready to throw it in the trash. 

Just as the slice was about to meet its doom, another image flashed through my head. 

I don't have a picture, but I can tell you the story and I think it will be just as good: 

While still in Uganda last April, we had spent the entire day walking at Bethany Village. When we made it back to the mainland, we grabbed our sandwiches that we had packed and we devoured them. 

In the bottom of the bag were two pieces of bread. We hadn't had enough meat for another sandwich so we had simply put mayonnaise and mustard on it, incase someone got really hungry. 

The kids from the village played around us as we ate, but one little boy sat a few feet away just staring. 

As we finished our meal, my friend got ready to throw things away and I grabbed the extra pieces of bread with mayonnaise and mustard and I motioned to the boy. 

His eyes lit up and he came flying towards us. 

He'd been waiting for a bite, and now all I had to offer him was two pieces of bread with no meat. 

I kicked myself for not offering him my sandwich, but he didn't seem the least bit upset. In fact, he grabbed the bread, bowed his head, and ran off. 

I thought he'd run off and scarf the bread down, but what I saw, instead, is something I will never forget. 

The little boy ran over to his friends and starting dividing up the bread so that they could each have a piece. 

They all jumped and giggled with joy and looked over at us, smiling and waving and thankful for a few pieces of bread. 

Since when did I become so spoiled that I need to throw away a slightly stale piece of bread? 

Today, I'm choosing to be thankful for the incredible blessings that have been laid in my lap. How can you not be thankful when you remember the tiny little faces like these that were thankful for so little: