When eyes are opened, one sees more clearly what the light is revealing. This is what the Father has done for me this past week; pealed back one more layer from my eyes to expose that much clearer His kingdom around me. However, when the Father reveals that which was unseen, the enemy fights that much harder to reclaim it.
I say this because this is how I felt walking into a Lincoln, Nebraska church service the morning after arriving home from training camp. As the music started for the service worship, I stood and began to look around the room. People were singing, sitting still in prayer, playing instruments, and raising their arms in praise. The atmosphere itself was actually far more lively than many of the typical mid-west churches I am use to visiting. But as I looked across the room I sensed with a new reality the emptiness and lack of purpose in the eyes of these faithful attenders.
It was at this point I began to question my purpose in being there. I mean heck, I know what it's like to be with a people alive in Christ and this place was definitely not meeting my qualifications for alive. At this point I was beginning to reason why I shouldn't march right up to the podium and let these people know why they were not seeing Jesus show up in their service.
Ooops . . . it took a whole two seconds for me to receive what should have been a slap in the face, yet instead was a gentle, firm rebuke from the Holy Spirit. "Who are you to judge what I am doing here? Can you say that I am not at work in this house? Maybe I'm not as present as they could allow, but son, it's no different with you." Ouch, these words were a sword to my spirit: a needed divider. I realized that I had begun to put experience and feeling over the never faultering presence and truth of the Father who is at work in every heart, not just where I can see.
He continued to say "son, let me worry about their salvation; you simply focus on seeking my kingdom. The rest will follow after." The enemy almost robbed me of entering into what the Father was doing right before my eyes.
I left church that morning humbled yet excited over the reality that my God is at work in the lives of His people even though I may not see it clearly. Though for now I see in a mirror dimly, with cloudy eyes, He sees it clearly in the perfect light of His radiant glory and grace.
Journal Entry: July 21, 2013
