day 27 - shaken and stirred

My heart is slowly coming out of hiding. I’ve tucked it away, hating that it hesitates before the Lord. I had a rather intense encounter with Him Friday before last, and my heart has been limping along ever since. Articulation is normally a strong point for me, but I seem to have lost my voice. My heart feels like it’s vibrating – still shaken to the core by an encounter with the Almighty God. You know how you favor a broken limb, holding it close and hardly allowing it to move for fear of injuring it more, or experiencing more pain? Yeah, kinda like that…

He sent me on a mission. I know that as surely as I’ve known anything in my life. He called me to Knoxville to crawl onto the hospital bed and to pray over my cousin and read Scripture to him as he lay there on life support. Let me just interject here – I’ve never done anything like that in my life – never even considered the possibility of it. But yet, there I was, perched on the bed, Bible in hand, talking to Bill about a Jesus he knew about, but did not profess to know.

My hesitation to even write this is crazy. I know that I know that I KNOW that He used me in that hospital room. He touched many lives through me, and that, in and of itself, is an amazing thought. But there’s more… much more.

I refuse to be silenced by the thought that this may come across as anything but a testimony of what GOD has done. I believe with all my shaking heart that HE used me to speak to Bill’s heart. I believe that HE used me to save his soul – to give him that one last chance to be redeemed and restored to the Father.

That is an absolutely crazy thought to try to grasp. My heart can’t hardly stand it – my brain has definitely not wrapped around it. But I know it to be true. The implications of that are beyond anything that I’ve even begun to process…

What if I had said no? We do have free will, after all. I could have told the Lord He was crazy and not thought another thing about it. The thought of disobedience in this situation is absolutely terrifying. Why He would chose me, why He knew I would say yes… it’s too much for me.

I am awed. I am stirred deep within. I am shaking. My heart is vibrating – humming in my chest. Words cannot begin to describe how I feel… and it all began with a yes…

The Scripture reference for today is Matthew 4:18-22:

18As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." 20At once they left their nets and followed him.

21Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

The immediacy of their response was the key to following Christ. Had I postponed – had I waited to ponder… How often do we delay obedience by using the excuse, “let me pray about that some more”…? I am not advocating over-reaction, nor am I advocating not approaching Him in prayer. The point here is this – once you’ve heard Him, no matter how much sense it does not make – GO. Go and glorify your Lord. Be the disciple, the fisher of men, that you are called to be. He will be honored and glorified, and you will be blessed beyond measure. I hope that you take the chance – that your heart gets the chance to shake like mine…