Are you listening God?

This is a spoken word I wrote a few months ago. It's a prayer and it was my way of processing the struggle I was dealing with. The video clip at the end is just me performing it. Enjoy :)

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Are you listening God?
Do you hear when I speak?
Because sometimes, I don't feel like you do.
I don't know how to talk to you.
I just want to shout but I don't know what to say.
So please forgive the dirt that comes up as I pray.
God my life is a mess and I'm under so much stress
Just in case you didn't guess by the look on my face.
I feel so out of place.
I don't know who I am or who you made me to be.
I've masked myself so well that I can't even see.
Emily? Who is she?
God my thoughts are perverted and with sin I have flirted
Because it feels so good to do what you hate.
I have lusted over men
And I have hurt myself again and again and again.
I've piled so much on my plate that soon it will break unless you give me a hand.
So would you help me please?
My life, it is dark, but I want it to be light.
I've done so much wrong but I long to do right.
God I can't do it alone but I feel like I must.
Why, oh why, is it so hard to trust you to take my heart and hold it in your hands,
To believe that you're not like every other man who has hurt me.
Can you promise me that you're different?
Can you prove to me that you're good?
Because I need that God.
I need you to look at me and speak to me truth
Because there are so many lies that try to dilute the things that you say.
God listen as I pray!
I want to follow you but it is so hard.
Sometimes I wish I'd been dealt a different card
Because there is so much hurt as I look at my past
And I don't know how to get over that.
I've built up these walls that have trapped me inside
And I want to be free but I can't help but hide
Because freedom scares me.
So would you hold me close and tell me it's okay?
Because without you I can't stand to face another day.
I'm all out of strength so would you give me some more?
I want your Spirit to downpour over my life.
God I need you and I want to be with you.
Would you show me how?
Would you teach me to hear your voice
And to make the right choice even when I don't want to?
Teach me to bow on my knees and live a life that will please your heart.
Give me a fresh start so that when I stand before you, I am clean.
And give me new dreams.
And revive the ones that have died.
I want to abide in your will.
But still, my heart is broken as I have spoken.
It is divided deep inside and no matter how hard I've tried
I can't hide that from you.
But I don't want to give up control
Because I'm afraid you'll just leave me with an even bigger hole than what I started with.
But God, I give up
Because that's all I can do.
I just want to follow you,
To be made new.
I am so sick of the shame.
So unite my heart to fear your name.
Because I want to love you with all of my life,
I want to live away from the strife that happens when you're not there.
So God please, listen to my prayer.

 

Prayers of an 11 year old

I was cleaning out my closet today and I found a journal from when I was 11. There was an entry from October 29, 2003 that I thought was really interesting. It said. . .
"Dear Journal,
Lord you are a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path. You are my redeemer. You love me. I love you. You are always there for me no matter what. You forgave all my sins when you died on the cross. I wish I could repay you but I can't. The only way to even sort of repay you is to tell about you, get more Christians. I will try to be a missionary. Please help me.

Emily"

Apparently I've wanted to be a missionary since I was 11. Weird. I don't remember saying that at all. I remember wanting to be many other things in the last 10 years- an aeronautical engineer, a lawyer, a teacher- but being a missionary was never a serious option. So it's amazing that this little statement from when I was 11 is coming true. Here I am, preparing to be a long term missionary. And I've already travelled through many parts of the world sharing the gospel. I never could have imagined that my life would look like this. God is faithful in answering our prayers, even the ones we pray as a little kid.  That's pretty cool if you ask me :)

That's really all I wanted to talk about but just for some laughs I'm going to include another entry that I found really funny.

October 22, 2003
". . .Please Lord help me get less homework. Also help Miss Schommer. I'm pretty sure she's not a Christian. She'd probably be nicer if she was. That's all I have to say tonight.

Emily"

Woman at the Well

Spoken word about the woman at the well from John 4. I love this! Watch it.

He who has God

“He who has God has nothing less than he who has God and everything else.” –Heath McNease

A few months ago I stumbled upon this album on Noisetrade by Heath McNease that was inspired by the works of C.S. Lewis. I had never heard of McNease before but I downloaded the album and I love it. The last song, The Weight of Glory, had this line in it. “He who has God has nothing less than he who has God and everything else.”

Every time I hear that, it stops me. I need to hear that truth so badly! God is enough. With him alone are we satisfied. I can have money, success, love, spiritual gifts, etc. in addition to God but I’m no better off than if I only have God. He is absolutely sufficient.

Lately it’s been a struggle to believe that. For example, the week before last was ministry week at school. God did a lot of really cool stuff through Bethany students but to be completely honest, my week sucked. I didn’t see God move in exciting ways. I didn’t see anyone healed or come to Christ. I didn’t even get to pray with anyone. So when I heard other people’s cool God stories, I was jealous. I felt inadequate and useless. I felt like I was doing something wrong or I wasn’t as good as them or something. I realized even in the moment that those things were lies but I couldn’t see the truth. It felt like I was lacking something that everyone else had.

But one thing I learned from Royal Servants is that feelings should never be in control. If feelings are in control, the train of our life is going backwards and downhill. Rather, we need to let facts and then faith lead us.

The fact is that God is enough. I am not lacking anything because I have him. I who have God have nothing less than they who have God and everything else. Yes, it would be really nice to be successful in all the ministry I do. It would be nice to not have to work so hard to raise the money I need for Slovenia. It would be nice to speak in tongues or prophecy or have some amazing gift I could use to advance the kingdom. But those things aren’t necessary and I can be content without them.

 God alone is way more than I could ever need or hope for. He is the one who satisfies my desires with good things. He is the one who will bring me success and provide for my needs. His gifts are good but he has already given me his Spirit which is the best gift of all. There’s no need for me to be jealous because I have nothing less than anyone else.

“He who has God has nothing less than he who has God and everything else.”  

Blessed.

In case you don’t already know, I will be going on a mission trip to Slovenia in May. I sent out the majority of my support letters a few weeks ago and I’ve been playing the waiting game ever since. Today I received my first two donations. Now, I’ve had to do plenty of support raising in years past so this wasn’t anything new. But what was new was the feeling of being utterly blessed.

I was so incredibly encouraged today when I realized that people were supporting me. Honestly, it had very little to do with the money (though I do greatly appreciate that!). I was much more encouraged by the realization that people are supporting me because they believe in what God is doing through me. They’re not just giving me their money to be nice. If that was the case, they would have stopped giving years ago. They support me because they love me and because they love God. They support me because they’ve seen the fruit of what God has done in my life and they want to be a part of it. They support me because they’re excited to see the gospel spread.

I am overwhelmed by how blessed I am. I am blessed to have these faithful supporters who believe in God’s plan for my life. I am blessed to have the opportunity to travel the world spreading the gospel. I am blessed to be at a school where I am constantly built up and encouraged.  I am blessed to have a family that loves me and supports me, even when they don’t understand why I want to do the things I do. I am blessed and I am very thankful. Thankful to God and thankful for the people around me.

So if you are reading this, thank you. You are a blessing to me! I pray that I could be a blessing to you as well.

Walls

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Emily. When she was young, something very bad happened, and Emily was terribly hurt. So she decided to build a wall around herself in order to block out the people who might hurt her in the future. But the wall was not yet very high or strong so people still got in and again she was hurt.
So Emily built another wall outside the first, but this one was higher and thicker. But again, people kept climbing over and breaking through and she was hurt. So she kept building more walls, thicker and higher. There was a door in the wall but Emily learned very early to keep it locked. No one was allowed inside her walls and she stopped going out. Eventually the walls had gotten so high and thick that she had an impenetrable fortress. She was safe in her walls and no one could hurt her.
But one day, she started thinking about what was outside the walls. It had been so long since she had ventured out that she couldn't remember. She couldn't even remember why she had built the walls in the first place. She thought about leaving her fortress to see what lie beyond but she was so terrified. She had, after all, built the walls for a reason.
She thought about leaving for months until finally, she felt desperate to know what was beyond the walls. But it had been so long since she had opened the door that she couldn't remember where she had put the keys. Her fortress that she had built for safety had literally become a prison. She had trapped herself inside her own walls.
She tried desperately to break down the walls or to climb over but they were too thick and too high. It was impossible for her to get out without the key. She searched for weeks to no avail. One day though, after searching and searching, she realized something of incredible significance. The keys were in her pocket. They always had been. Throughout all of her searching and desperation, she had held the keys to her freedom.
But now that she had the keys, she didn't know what to do. She wanted so badly to leave her walls and be free but now that this was actually a possibility, she was completely overwhelmed by fear. Could she handle the outside world? How was she supposed to act? She didn't remember. What would other people think? What if she got hurt again? Was it really worth it to take that risk?
She had so many fears and doubts and all of them were valid. But she realized that she was truly desperate. She couldn't handle being a prisoner anymore. She had to be free. It was worth the risk. So she put the key in and opened the door. And then, for the first time in years, she stepped outside of her walls.

Forgiveness

Last Friday, in my Power of the Cross class, we talked about forgiveness. At the end of the class, we had some time to talk to God and work through some of the stuff we talked about. As I was praying, God brought up an incident from over two years ago that I needed to forgive. So I'm going to get a little vulnerable and share that with you.
The incident he brought up was from my second trip to Sierra Leone. We were doing ministry at these barracks and while we were evangelizing, I got separated from my partner. Our whole team was still fairly close in the same area so even though I wasn't supposed to be alone, I didn't think much of it when two men started asking me questions about the drama we had just done. So I started talking to them and it was actually a really good conversation. They weren't ready to accept Christ or anything but they were engaging with what I was saying. Towards the end of our talk though, it started getting a little weird. They started asking me for my watch or my bandanna because they wanted something to remember me by. I said no. Then they asked me for my email or phone number. Again, I declined. By now I was starting to get uncomfortable so I tried to walk away but one man grabbed my hand and wouldn't let me go. I tried some more and he pulled me close and wrapped himself around me from behind and then kissed my cheek. When he did this, my team leader saw and ran over to rescue me. After this happened I felt terrible. I was angry and I felt violated and dirty. I wanted to just scrub my cheek over and over and pretend like it never happened. But it did happen and it affected me a lot.
Now, I had forgiven this man before and it's probably been months since I last thought about him. So it was really weird when this popped into my head after the forgiveness talk. It was even weirder because it was the first thing to pop into my head after the talk. So I prayed about it and I forgave him again and it was good.
The next day we had outreach. I'm in an outreach called Trinity Works where we go down to the University of Minnesota and evangelize. This week, I got partnered with one of my classmates Erica. So at this point in the story we had already had one AMAZING conversation with this man Prayvion (I have no clue how to spell that but it sounds like I wrote it...). He rededicated his life to Christ! But that's actually a different story so I don't want to talk much about it right now.
Anyways, after we had prayed for Prayvion and were walking back to the church, two men approached us and asked if we were from around here. We said no and found out that they weren't either. One of the guys was definitely flirting with Erica and he invited us to a bar so they could buy us drinks. Obviously we said no but we did agree to walk with them to the bar so that we could talk more. As we walked, they asked us what we were doing down at the U of M. Erica told them straight out that we were talking to people about Jesus. That shocked them! The one man said that he believed there was some sort of higher power but that it couldn't be Jesus or any of the other religions. He argued everything we said. The other man kept fairly quiet and let us talk even though he didn't agree.
Eventually we got to a stoplight where we stopped to talk for about 10 minutes. Erica started talking to the quieter man so the other one came to talk to me. We actually had a pretty decent conversation. He asked me why I believed in Jesus and when I answered he interrupted me and said that I only believed because I was taught to and Jesus was just an invented man that was supposed to bring control to society. I said, "No! I believe in Jesus because my life used to be crap but then Jesus entered it and he transformed me. Now, even though there are still crappy circumstances in my life, I am free and I am joyful and I have hope and life. And that transformation couldn't have happened if Jesus was just some made up control method." I was pretty fired up :) He didn't respond much to that though.
We kept talking for a few minutes and Erica and I needed to leave. We started to say good bye and this guy I had just been arguing with, who had been hitting on my friend the last 15 minutes, grabbed me and pulled me into a hug and then kissed me on my cheek even though I was pushing him off. Sound familiar? This was almost identical to what I had just forgiven the Sierra Leonian man for the day before. This wasn't just some weird coincidence, it was an attack.
So I pushed the guy off and Erica grabbed me and we walked away quickly. She asked if I was ok and I thought about it and I was. I realized that this creep didn't have to affect me. I didn't have to let him make me feel dirty or violated. What he did was gross and wrong but it didn't have to get under my skin. I was ok. I was able to forgive the man in Africa so now I could forgive this guy too. But I didn't have to wait 2 years to do it. Satan's attack didn't phase me, if anything it made me stronger and more confident.
On our way back to church, Erica and I prayed about what had just happened and then once she was sure I was alright, we started praising God for how he had moved that night. We praised him for Prayvion and for encouragement and for speaking through us. By the time we made the 10 minute walk back to the church, we were both so joyful. We couldn't stop laughing and smiling and it was just spilling out of us. Man, God is so good! He is so faithful and loving. He took this mess of a situation where I was attacked and turned it into something I could praise him for. How cool is that?! So anyways, it was a great night and I serve a great God.
Amen.