When a party of two is big enough…

Growing up in YWAM, I have sat through plenty of teaching on the topic of ‘hearing the voice of God.’ Some of it has been excellently presented, some of them were (to be honest) fairly boring to sit through. I can’t think of one specific teaching time when I suddenly ‘got it’ and was able to hear the voice of God – but today I live with an incredible legacy that I inherited from my parents, from the King’s Kids staff, and that was brought into maturity through the tender grace of the Lord, and leaders around my life who have inspired me to go after some form of prophetic anointing.

Every now and then, I have days where I get frustrated… where I want to throw a hissy fit and give up the pursuit of hearing Him more clearly. Today was one of those days… there have been a few major things in recent months that I thought I’d heard the Lord clearly on which haven’t worked out the way I thought they would… and its felt like I hit a brick wall and I’m not hearing clearly.

These hissy fit moments don’t last long though… they’re usually birthed out of frustration, and the tension between the anointing and clarity that I have now… and where I want it to be. In the middle of my workday, as I was making coffees and contemplating some of these recent areas that so far haven’t worked out as I thought they would, I felt the Lord point out that the prophetic without relationship is simply fortune telling. It reduces it to being a know-the-future vending machine. As usually happens, my thought process was ‘hey, that’s a good way to put it… wait… ouch.’

I am unashamed about the fact that I want to hear the Holy Spirit and know what he is saying at a whole other level to what I do now. Sometimes I second guess myself and my ability to be sure that I’m catching His heart, not just superimposing my thoughts onto what I feel is His communication. I literally want to have the whole names-faces-addresses deal… to be able to speak to individuals, groups and communities with the clear Word of the Lord.

However, more than any of the ‘stuff’, I want to know Him. It’s a beautiful cliché, but today has reminded me to be more jealous over my secret place… the prayer closet… sometimes people use weird terms and have strange ideas about this, but in reality it boils down to three words. “You and me.” Earlier in the week one of our ALC lectures was on ‘devotional pathways’, exploring the concept that everyone has a different way of connecting with God. I was what our speaker called a ‘contemplative intellectual.’ I love searching the Word… primarily in the context of being alone with Jesus (with my commentaries and Greek dictionaries.)

So in the morning, I’ve said I’ll be awake and praying while a friend is speaking at a meeting. It’s in a different time zone, so that means an early start for me… but once that’s done, I’m going to take my bible and laptop and head to the secret meeting place, and get to know God just that little bit better.

Only a glimpse

Upon the recommendation of a blog-friend – ie one of those people that you meet by starting to read their blog, then suddenly you’re 15,000km across the earth and you get to meet them in person – I downloaded the Forerunner Music compilation album, Majestic. It’s one of the newer releases from IHOP-KC and it’s been playing on repeat on my computer for the last three days. That’s due to the fact I have no CD player that works in my car, and I don’t own any form of portable music player.

There are two songs in particular which I really like – I’ve had ‘84′ by Justin Rizzo playing in my head all day, in particular the line, “This is but a picture, only a glimpse, of what I will be doing forever.” The other one I really like is called ‘The Entry’ by Matt Gilman – and I like it because there is a chorus on there that I first heard played on the webstream this one time seven months ago on a nightwatch set, it stuck in my head, and I’ve been singing it continously ever since, without knowing where to find it.

That line ‘only a glimpse…’ resonates within my spirit… because I know the truth that this is what I was built for. Along the lines of Psalm 27:4, where David writes the famous words, “One thing I have desired… that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,” and Psalm 84 where he writes, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere,” along the lines of the famous Augustinian quote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” and along the lines of the insatiable longing for something that’s deep within my spirit that won’t go away… I know that I was made to be fascinated by Jesus… that he has set eternity in my heart… that somehow, deep within my DNA, there is a residual longing for God that can only be answered by Himself.