Indescribable

I just titled this blog post "Indescribable," and now I'm going to attempt to describe this thing that I have deemed indescribable. Hm...

So yesterday, I went to Impact and was delighted to see that SOS (Students On Staff), which is made up of a good majority of my closer friends at Impact, were leading the Impact service. It started out with one of my good friends, who has been truly blessed with musicality and who has such a deep connection with God, leading worship with a set of Hillsong United songs. Watching him worship (when my eyes weren't closed), I just felt this sort of awe at the connection that God has with him, that worshipping Him just opens up a line between them. It was awesome to see it from a third-person perspective and also to feel it happening around me and within myself, everyone just opening up to His presence and praising Him.

Two of my friends spoke before and after a song-skit (which I will describe shortly the best I can) and it was amazing how God spoke through them. I kind of knew beforehand that my guy friend who spoke was outgoing and would have been up to speaking, but to see one of the girls from my small group, the shyest of us all, speak? It was awesome! And I know that she would not have gotten up there and talked to us about witnessing to others had God not spurred her on to do it. I am so blessed to know her and be her friend.

And the song-skit. Oh. My. Goodness. It was...wow. It's to the song "Dare You to Move" by Switchfoot. I'll try to explain the best that I can, but I am in no way doing it justice and I hope that it gets posted somewhere so I can watch it again and forward it on. So all of the SOS people in the skit were given sandwich-sized, cutout hearts. The SOS worship leader that I mentioned earlier was playing the role of Jesus, but nobody was in costume or anything so it wasn't cliche. He mouthed the song the entire time. First he gave a heart to his sister, who was playing the girl who kind of just came into the world. She goes off and finds some friends at a party and gets some confidence, but it's a little bit fake. One of the friends sees a guy and gives her cutout heart to him, and they're happy together, until another girl comes along and the guy throws the first girl's heart on the ground carelessly and walks off with the new girl. The expression on her face, of such sadness and heartbreak and numbness at the same time... I think it was at this point that I realized, "Why do I feel like I'm going to cry? I mean, this isn't anything really, really close to me at this point in time." The scene moved to two more high schoolers who were playing a mom and a dad, sitting at a table stiffly and ignoring each other, reading the paper, and a totally different girl comes to the table and tries to talk to them, but the kids playing the mom and the day burst out into argument for like the entire second verse of the song, and the girl is begging them to stop fighting, and she looks like she's about to cry... A tear slid down my cheek, and yet it wasn't anything close to home. So why was I so full of emotion? And then the scene turned to the guy from before (who took the girl's heart and threw it away for another). He slowly took an exacto-knife from his pocket and shakily, angrily, hopelessly, started pressing and dragging it across his wrist. His head was down the entire time in anguish... I think this was where I just couldn't keep the tears back, I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried, and I didn't know why. And then the first girl, whose heart the worship leader playing Jesus gave to her, started going around to each of the other three broken, hurting characters during the bridge of the song, witnessing to them with a sort of desperation that was so heartfelt and emotional and urgent... And at the end they all ended up kneeling at the worship leader's (Jesus's) feet, holding up their cutout hearts to him in abandon. His arms were out shoulder-height like Christ's were on the cross.

I did not do that any justice at all. And the only reason I can think of for why I just couldn't stop the tears from coming, why I was so moved by the whole thing, takes me back to something that happened on Saturday, while I was writing part of a story. It's a scene where a character, someone who has no significance to the plot whatsoever, ends up trying to commit suicide because, due to the temptings and antics of my main character (who is a demon), she ends up in massive debt and can't handle it and feels like she has nowhere to turn and nowhere to go and doesn't know what to do and just wants it to all end. And writing that, I felt this sudden surge of pain from the Spirit, and it became so hard for me to write all of a sudden, and I felt such a heaviness that I had never felt before when writing. It was this sudden reminder: God hurts for His children. He hurts when they hurt themselves, He hurts when we run from Him. He is our Father who loves us and He hurts when we hurt. I feel like this is similar to what happened in that room yesterday, that the Spirit inside me just showed me, "The Father hurts for this. He hurts when you give your heart to things that hurt you, not only because you turn from Him, but because you hurt yourself." And I just felt that hurt well up inside me, even though it wasn't like it was my own hurt. My parents have fought, but not since I was little. I have never cut, even though I have a few friends who have done it before. I have never had a boy break up with me, I have been the one who breaks up with a guy, though guys who I've liked have taken that for granted.

And the desperation with which the worship leader's sister witnesses is such that it struck me that these aren't just people, they are God's children, even if they don't know it! Even the people we don't like, who we think don't deserve life, who don't know Christ, were made in God's image and He longs for them to return to Him! Christ could come back any day for His people, first of all. Second of all, people could die at any time, and if those people refuse God even to their deaths, they have no salvation. That's the kind of desperation that that girl was running around with: The kind that knows that our life on Earth is short compared to eternity, and we may not have much time left.

Walking

Last night, I read 1 Thessalonians 2 and the verse that stuck out at me while I was SOAPing was verse 12, which talks about walking worthy of God, who has called you into His kingdom and glory. Coincidentally enough, at Sonrise this morning (our school's Bible Study that me and a couple of my small group girls organized) Ellen was talking about how we need to live like Jesus. His was definitely a life worthy of God, because He is God! He loved so much, and with every gesture he embodied the love He wanted the world to know about. He trusted His Father (Himself? how confusing the trinity is!) so much, and other who watched Him saw His relationship with God and questioned Him about His ways.

And then, ironically enough, I sprain my ankle in gym class while playing soccer. This must have been the third, fourth, maybe even fifth time I've sprained the same ankle by rolling it. Until I began writing this blog, I saw it as a hinderance and began questioning, "Why?"

So what's the irony? The irony is that I cannot walk right. I am limping along, trying to keep as much weight off of my injured foot as possible. It's almost as though my physical injury is imitating the struggle that's going on within myself. I've been trying so hard to lead a life worthy of the calling I have recieved, yet recently I have felt like I'm drowning under many of the things the world is trying to throw onto me. During stressful times like these, my focus on God often strays and I become vulnerable to what Satan tries to trip me up with. Just like how I'm struggling to walk right physically because of the stress on my ankle, I'm struggling to walk worthy of God spiritually because of the stress on my soul.

This really makes me stop and realize that I need to take a step back. Lately I've taken to practicing solitude and silence, and I feel as though I look forward to those times with God because they release me from the small matters of life and focus me back in on the One who matters the most. Sometimes we want to take on the world and all that it throws at us, but we need to remember that our souls need to rest every now and then, and we have the freedom to take what is thrown at us and throw it to God, because He enjoys relieving us from our burdens.

Surrender

I just recently came back from a weekend retreat called Blast at a camp in Wisconsin. I went into it hoping that God would speak something to my heart; I came out crying tears of joy and wonder.

Friday evening, the speaker brought up a point during session that made me stop and think really hard. He said something along the lines of, "Guys, I know many of you have given your life to Christ and say that you have surrendered, but would you really do absolutely everything He asked you to do? Would you say anything He asked you to say? Would you go anywhere in the world He asked you to go?" It scared me a little bit and really caused me to stop and question myself. Doubt began to cloud my mind a little bit. I thought that I had accepted Christ a bit over a year ago and given myself as a complete sacrifice, wholly surrendered, to Him this past summer at Sandblast, another retreat. But little doubts were still creeping around my mind. I didn't know if I would ignore God if I was caught in the moment. I didn't know if I would refuse Him outright if I didn't realize that He was speaking to me at a certain time. It kind of freaked me out a bit because I wanted to give Him my everything. I just didn't know if I really could, and I discovered that at Sandblast I hadn't fully committed myself to His will, just mostly. There was still a part of me holding back.

I shared my insecurity with my small group and I prayed desperately that He would show me a way, that He would help me out with what I was struggling with and help me to commit the rest of myself to Him so that I would do and say everything He wants me to and go wherever He wants me to go. I prayed that He would help me not to fear the outcomes of obeying Him.

Well, the next evening at session was a bombardment of amazingness. We were worshipping to a bunch of songs, and especially when we started singing a song called "I Could Run Away," I just felt God speaking to my heart through the actual song lyrics and through the words that the worship leader added himself. It was a fantastic release, and so beautiful that I couldn't help but cry because of how awesome He is and how crazy awesome it was to see so many people walk to the front of the auditorium to accept Christ and to be prayed for. I completely let go and just worshipped Him and prayed and cried some more. My small group was a bit tearful too, which made me feel way less self-conscious about my situation (even though I wasn't too self-conscious to begin with). I just felt God calling me to really, truly give everything else up to Him, and to stop worrying about how I would provide for myself or what other people would think of me or anything like that. And so I let go. I surrendered, and I pray it's once and for all this time.

We took communion after worship, and me and one of my small group friends just couldn't stop crying the entire time! It was so awesome how touched everyone was by where we were and how we were worshipping with everything we had and how many had come to Christ. During small group time after that, I talked about how God had touched me and let me know that I cannot keep ignoring Him when He whispers to me about traveling to other countries to serve. I had been afraid of really considering it because my mom is against it and because I was not sure whether that was the best decision for me. But duh, of course: You don't know what's best for you, God does! So let Him be the one to lead you!

So on Sunday morning I stepped up to the microphone with tears streaming down my face as I told 500+ people about this covenant I had made, this promise to "do all He asks me to do, say all He asks me to say, and go everywhere He asks me to go." I seriously couldn't stop crying after that, especially when my other emotional friend came to me and hugged me and started crying also and when one of the sophomore guys rested his hand on my shoulder. Even before worship, when the leader was praying for us, I couldn't stop crying, and this guy next to me that I didn't even know put his arm around me and the person on his other side. Of course I ended up crying even harder. I don't even know why; the tears just kept falling. And now that I have time to think about it, I think I was just crazy overwhelmed by how much God was working in me and in everyone around me. How awesome is He!!!