I don't know what the Lord is doing in me. It is good and painful at the same time. It is deep and satisfying. He is beckoning deeper. He is inviting me to more fully consecrate my life to him. He wants my mind, my thoughts, my dreams, my attitude, my speech, my sermons, my writings, my every word consecrated to him. He wants everything I put before my eyes consecrated to him. He wants my heart fully devoted to him. He wants my heart to feel what his heart feels. He wants to weigh his burden on me.
I have sat before him in tears this morning. I have ached for our nation, for revival, to be used, to be weighed down with his concerns, to be fully surrendered. All I have is this moment. I can't go back and relive yesterday. I am not promised tomorrow. All I have is this moment to be surrendered to him. The weight of that surrender and concern for this nation and this community break my heart. It is a breaking and a weight I have not felt in a long time. A LONG LONG TIME.
Many years ago, while serving as the staff evangelist at Denman Avenue Baptist Church, I had a similar experience. God blessed me in that my office was the old prayer room of the church. My office was isolated and the prayer times I had with the Lord remind me of the hymn where the words are written, "I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the joy we share as I tarry there none other has ever known. My soul thrilled with the encounters I shared with the Lord in that office.
One evening while praying I asked God to burden my heart with what burdened his heart. I asked to feel what he feels. The tears began flowing so uncontrollably and the pain in my heart became so deep I had to ask the Lord to stay his hand for I did not feel I could take anymore. I have never forgotten that encounter. That is what I began feeling this morning. A deep sense of burden for our nation and for the church. A weight filled with sorrow and the sting of a nation adrift. I keep sensing God has a role for me to play in turning this nation back to him. My role might just be to pray and write behind the scenes. My role might be to preach beyond the local church at some point. My role might be to mobilize believers for prayer and revival. Whatever my role is I am as surrendered to God in this moment as I know to be.
The pursuit of God and revival start for me in this prayer closet with my own life. He has weighed heavily on my heart. He is doing something great and deep in me. Out of this room I pray for encounters and messages that change Faith Community, Paradise, and to the far ends of the earth.
I do not know how to be any more surrendered in this moment. I am his. He can do anything in me. I welcome the deep work of his Spirit to truly transform me. I am not satisfied. I want more. MUCH MORE! I want all my mind and heart can contain and even then I ask for an enlarged heart and an expanded mind to hold more of him. I am not satisfied but more hungry for the things of God. I am weighed down with surrender.
I have never wanted to be any more devoted and available to God than in this moment. I want to be weighed down in surrender to him and his purpose to bring revival back to this land. I yearn to see deep conviction fall on my life and the church like I have never seen. I yearn to be weighed down with the sorrow God has over this hell bent nation and lost souls. I yearn for the fire of his presence to burn in my heart so white hot that sermons become messages from God igniting the dry grass of souls like a prairie fire spreading from heart to heart, church to church, community to community, county to county, state to state, and nation to nation. I yearn to be a part of God restoring a world to himself.
I lay down as low as I can get in his presence weighed down with the burden and desire to fully surrender. I yield my rights, my comforts, and my security all for the sake of him who loved me and died for me.
The weight of his heart is filling me deeply. The desire to remain surrendered is overwhelming. What God is doing in the depths of my soul frustratingly cannot be put into words. I am trying but I cannot capture it. It is something that has to be caught more than taught. God is becoming my passionate obsession. All else fades in the light of his presence. Nothing holds my gaze and captures my entire being like him. I want more of him. Not more experiences. Not more success. Not more possessions. More of him.
In his presence all I want to do is to be more surrendered, more yielded, more available, more on his altar, more ready to follow, more willing to go, and more devoted to him and his purposes. If all this just culminates with deeper prayer in this little home office and more blogs, books, and messages born right here I am surrendered to that life. If he wills to open doors to put me in backwood places and churches to proclaim his truth to usher in days of revival I am surrendered. If he wills to place me before large crowds on college campuses I am surrendered. If he wills to place me in foreign lands to declare his truth I will pack my bags and go. If he wills me to stand behind the pulpit in one church and give my remaining days to one flock I am surrendered. If he uproots all I hold dear and precious and calls me to once again step out in faith I am weighed down with the desire to surrender. I do not know how to give him more love, more worship, more service in this moment than to be weighed down with the desire to surrender.
I am sure for anyone who reads this blog you will find little more than the ramblings of a preacher and author. O I pray that one spark from my life might fall onto someone reading this and spark the desire to be weighed down in surrender to God more than you have ever been before. I pray some dry and thirsty soul might read about what God is doing in me and move in you the desire for more of him. This blog was never meant to be rambling. I am like a cup overflowing this morning and what spills over the brim is what I have tried to captured. I am weighed down with the burden to surrender to him like never before. I hope you will feel the same.
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