Last January I attended the New Zealand YWAM Jubilee – celebrating 50 years of Youth With A Mission – immediately followed by the Call2All missions gathering. It was incredible to spend a week surrounded people who feel like home for me… there isn’t a YWAM base or much of an ongoing ‘missional’ presence in Nelson beyond the local churches and ministries. However, the moments that stand out to me weren’t so much to do with the missional aspect, but with an ambush that God set up that significantly changed the shape of how I have spent my year. Having gone right to the edge of burnout the previous October, I thought I was dealing with it well and would be fine to continue in an active ministry role, but within the space of a half hour prophetic conversation with two friends, it became very clear that things had to change.
The short story of a long journey was that after some further conversations and evaluation, I stepped out of ministry entirely, eased up on my study schedule, and sat in a place of emptiness and brokenness for months. This is an excerpt from my journal at that point,
“I want to be needed… and yet somehow the fact that God doesn’t need me… but he wants me… has failed to make a deep and lasting impression in my heart.There is this experiential gap between ‘knowing’ I am loved by Him… and experiencing that love. And I want that gap fixed.”
And so, today I found myself thinking about that conversation that I had almost a year ago, and in particular the challenge that I needed to be awakened to love… it’s a phrase that was prayed over me then, and a phrase that I’ve adopted this year, asking the Lord to awaken me to love. As I was walking home from work, mulling over this general concept of love and praying through it, the phrase “Confident in love,” came to mind. There is a difference between being awakened to love, and being confident in love. Being awakened to love means we become aware of what we have not known and experienced before… of the areas in our lives where there is not real engagement with the reality of being loved by the Father, and we are no longer able to settle back into the same dull rhythm without intentionally killing the longings that are in our heart – longings that were placed there in order to lead us back to the One who is Himself love.
Being confident in love is different to simply being awakened… confidence is defined as, “the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something” by the Oxford Dictionary. We move beyond awareness of what we don’t know… and consistently experience a reality. Confidence is built on history, on trust, on prior knowledge and revelation… we move into a new level of surety, of faith, that removes insecurity and doubt. I haven’t yet reached a point where I am consistently confident in the knowledge of God’s love for me and over me… but I think that’s a good thing to be going after in this season.
