Back when I did my DTS, I wrote out a prayer to the Lord. It was during worship week that I prayed this prayer. Worship week was a time where my fellow students and I were diving deep into learning what it meant to be a true worshiper of the living King. This was not a week where we learned how to praise through songs and music but started the process of understanding how to live a life of worship. Now, I can say I am receiving the blessing of that prayer being answered. I will let you know that this was not a prayer for something tangible, a miracle, or a provision. This was a prayer for how I wanted God to work in my heart and life. If you have ever prayed something like this I am sure you have seen God stretch your heart in extremely uncomfortable and challenging ways. However, through the process I have seen that our God can turn things like ashes into gold.
“ It is weird to think that you live in me. And that you created me to be a home for your spirit to dwell. This changes my thinking. I am a house for God, so I want to be a light. A light people can see. I want to be a light like a lighthouse. I want to be a hospital house for you. Welcoming all that you have to dwell in and out of me. I want to be one who sees and hears all that you are doing in all the other homes you have and the homes you have set out to live inside in the future. I want eyes like yours to see others the way you see them. Overall God, I want you to reign over me. Become the one and only leader of this house.God take every part of me into your control and do with me as you please. God make the house you have built in me to bring unending glory into your kingdom.”
The above paragraph is the prayer I prayed for. And I can honestly say that putting this out into the public is not super easy for me. In fact, if I did not feel God so strongly leading me to do it, I 100% would not. But I am learning to have a heart of obedience.
How God has started to answer this prayer has not been a warm and fuzzy experience. I would more describe it as being smashed open and then being put back together with higher quality glue. HAHA! Now here is where we are getting into the heart and focus of it all.
I returned home from my DTS in February of this year, with the plan set to return as a YWAM staff member after a short 2 months at home. It has now been double that time and I am still back at home. One would say my plans have been completely turned upside down…. Well, that is what I initially thought, until now. As I look back at the past few months I see just how greatly God has worked on my heart one month, one week, and one day at a time. And on top of all that, he has blessed me by opening new doors in my life that I did not expect at all. And I mean like huge, crazy, amazing blessings that I do not at all deserve. Say what!?!?! God is crazy! I am so blessed to be his daughter. Anyhow, back to my heart-wrecking and focus changing. The hard part of the past few months was the things God brought conviction to in my life. He showed me some areas in my life that needed some deep heart checking. Two of those being how I often fuss and worry about the future and how I have lost track of my heart of prayer and seeking. Tying into those convictions, I felt God so often ask me “Where is your focus?”.
I have learned that it is so easy to look at what is going on around you and forget where you should really be looking. Circumstances can seem huge and take all of your focus. It can become easy to look at them, take COVID for example, and see what is annoying, not going right, or frustrating about them. But God taught me one thing that I want to never lose. And that is to stop, and instead of looking at what is going on, look at God. Genuinely asking him how he is already moving, what he is trying to teach me, and if there is any heart checking I need to do. This is not an easy thing, but I have learned it is a must. God is training my eyes and heart to look at the picture differently. Letting the foreground of the world blur and become mute, allowing me to start looking upward toward the eternal kingdom.
Lord thank you for convictions, grace, and forgiveness. Thank You that you faithfully answer prayers. Father God thank you that I get to be a lighthouse for your spirit to dwell in. That is an insanely crazy gift! Lord continue to teach, convict, and grow me. I am the house but you Father are the Keeper.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Where is your focus?
