Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Coming Off The Mountain Top!

It’s been just over two weeks when I had the privilege of coordinating a conference on Seeking Justice after 4 months of preparation. What an awesome time it was to encounter the Lord in way that I had never experienced before and to see Him answer prayers beyond our expectations. I remember sharing with a friend recently that it felt like my ‘wedding day’...strange analogy really since I have no idea what that ‘day’ would feel like but in a strange sense it was as if I had arrived....the dream that was placed in my heart so many years ago had become a reality. I had stepped into my calling and had finally ‘arrived’ at what God has destined to be involved in---seeking justice for children who are forced into prostitution. That day many of us came to the altar and made a commitment before the Lord. For each of us that commitment to seeking justice will be different but for me I think it was my way of consecrating my life before the Lord to some how make a difference in giving a voice to these precious ones who have no voice.

Since then, coming off the mountain top has been an interesting time. I find myself quite exhausted and not motivated to do anything. The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. The thought of ‘doing’ does not seem very appealing at this point for my soul just wants to ‘be’. My mind goes back to the story in 1 Kings 18 after Elijah called down fire on the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the power of the Lord was evident to all. But as the next chapter begins in 1 Kings 19, we find Elijah fleeing from Jezebel and sitting under a tree, tired and hungry. It took the angel of the Lord to touch him twice, to give him food that strengthened him in order that he would travel to Mount Horeb—the mountain of the Lord but there again he goes into a cave. I understand how Elijah feels. For now I am quite happy to sleep in a ‘cave’. I have no desire to ‘do’ anything. It is as if my body and mind and soul knows that now is not the time to do but rather now is the time to rest. In my younger days, it was so easy to want to move onto the next event after all our society has programmed us to be ‘performance driven’. But as I get older I am realizing that this season after the mountain top is a time to go deeper with the Lord. It is not only a time of renewal, refreshment and restoration but it is also a time of deeper reflection, a time of spiritual formation in the inner recesses of my soul. A time in which the Lord is doing something within me that I cannot see for now. It is another step in the journey of faith. The seed that is planted is growing in the dark and when the time is ready it will blossom. This morning I began to recognize one of the first buds of the seed---over these past weeks my prayers, my journal reflections are slowly focusing on the 6 young girls who will be entering the New Song (ARC) centre in late August in Cambodia. I do not know their names, they are faceless to me yet the One who has rescued them is the One who knows their names and their faces. I hope I will be able to meet them personally in my upcoming visit to Cambodia because they are the ones that God is giving me the privilege to carry around in my heart. They are His treasures, His precious ones and the more I think of them, the more I find myself asking the Lord to show me how to stand with them, how to share their pain and how to weep with them and how to love them with His compassion. One of my dreams of late is to not only spiritually invest in these but to tangibly be involved in giving them the opportunity to fulfill their dreams and aspirations as they grow up. I look forward to the day when I see their smiling faces, to see His hope and joy in them and most of all to see them fully enveloped in His love.

Lord Jesus continue to breathe your dreams into my heart and mind that I will long to see Your agenda fulfilled in this fallen world. Help me to have a dislocated heart as Nehemiah did, that while I live in one city I may be continually burden with being involved in rebuilding the broken gates and walls of the nation of Cambodia. Fill me with your vision for these 6 young ‘friends’ who one day I pray will be my ‘sisters’ in Christ and who will declare before all people that there is no God but the Lord God Almighty who sent forth His word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave’ (Psalm 107:20).