Before service started, I was praying desperately. A friend of mine, who had recently come to Christ, had been unable to attend service for two weeks straight. I was praying for her soul and for her, that she wouldn't start backsliding so early into her faith. God said, "check your verse of the day on your iPhone Bible app." I checked. This was the verse:
I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you've received it, it will be yours. - Mark 11:24
I really doubt it's a coincidence (the day before, I was having difficulty concentrating on my studies, and God gave me Colossians 3:23-24 as the verse of the day). Hallelujah.
A little bit of history before I continue: for nearly two years now, I've been struggling with theatre. Not that I'm bad at it, or that I was getting worse. I've just been feeling all the passion I once had for theatre drain out of me. Funny, because I've been into it since I was just 4 years old, and everyone, including myself, thought I was set for life. And it wasn't just like I didn't care about theatre anymore... it was that for a year, whenever I came into a theatre space, went for rehearsals, did theatre theory... it felt like I was being stabbed in the gut. The kind of pain you should get when you cry and break down after your relative's death. Yeah. But I was feeling it every week - sometimes even twice a week - over art lessons. Really strange. I just didn't get it. Before a performance overseas, I broke down, skipped the class I was meant to attend, camped out in the toilet, and cried. I really couldn't take it. Not just the mental and emotional burden, but the physical pain too. I'm not kidding when I said it felt like I was being stabbed in the gut. It made me giddy. I've never had any problem memorizing lines - give me 5 minutes and I've got the whole monologue down, no problemo. I've also never worried about auditions. Yes, I get a little jumpy and excitable, but never stagefright. Yet, when I was called in to do Shakespeare auditions (compulsory for all Year-3-going-to-Year-4 students), after weeks and weeks of training and practicing, I stood before the panel, felt like I had been punched in the stomach, couldn't breathe, and started to cry. That's never happened before. I restarted three times, and each time, I couldn't remember anything that I'd so carefully analysed (with great difficulty) over the past month. The kids who auditioned with me were terrified. I don't think they'd ever seen, or expected to see me of all people break down at an audition, forget her lines, and be unable to continue. I shocked myself. The problem was getting worse and worse. I cried before every theatre lesson, I felt unexplainably worried and depressed and distressed during each class, and equally negative after it was all over. The worst part was that I didn't know why. I had been so happy doing theatre... what had gone wrong? I spent two years poring over it, and in the last six months, finally started taking action. I prayed fervently. I begged Him. I cried over it and pleaded for an answer. Silence. I continued asking, and it seemed that each time I failed to hear a response, the hurt got deeper, and the lack of control became even more consuming.
Then, during worship, God said, "kneel". And I replied slightly uncomfortably, "but I'm seated at the pews and I'm wearing a skirt." God replied (rather rationally), "do you want to hear My Voice or not?" So with (very little) difficulty, I knelt. When I did, God said (very very loudly, it was impossible for me to not hear Him), "you're not going to do theatre. I gave you 12 years of theatre training to hone your people skills and to help you to be more outgoing. You're going to use these skills - which you otherwise would never have - to speak to people about me, to evangelise, to spread the Word."
Amen. I nearly laughed. This is the answer I've been hoping, praying, waiting for... for nearly two years. It was a brutal test of patience, and a testimony of God's eternal faithfulness (even when you think He isn't listening... He is. He's just waiting to see what you will do.) If I had given up begging Him to lead me and show me His will, if I hadn't been willing to lose my ego and kneel, I may not have heard this response when He decided it was time to give it to me. Praise the Lord, for healing my hurt and clearing my confusion.
This morning, I prayed for a / verse about freeing myself and letting go and staying rooted in Him (it had been an unusually rough night spiritually: I could feel the spiritual warfare going on. At one point, the devil actually knocked the Bible right out of my hands, but I (or rather, He) caught it, and when I did, I felt completely refreshed and renewed, I could feel Him standing beside me and telling me that everything would be alright. It was a powerful experience for me because: 1) I've always searched for a tangible, "real" experience, and this was God saying that sometimes, you don't need a tangible, "real" experience. He's maybe not giving that to you because that's not what you really need. Because it would be redundant! You need emotional healing, or spiritual healing, or a miracle in yourself. Nowadays, we don't need such physical signs because we are capable of healing ourselves in that way; 2) it proved to me that the devil knows my weaknesses, and he will try everything and anything he can to hit me where I am vulnerable: in this case, he knows I've been looking for "real"signs. However, in trying to prove to me that he's better, he proved something else entirely. The fact that the devil exists, and is trying to hard to destroy my spiritual life, proves that there is a God who is greater than the devil and all his demons, and this is the God I know and love. Nonetheless, it was a spiritually, and physically, and emotionally draining night.) I flipped open the Bible and got this:
Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls. - Jeremiah 6:16
And that was already really cool. It didn't exactly answer my plea, but it did speak to me about seeking Him first at any difficult points in my life, and when making choices (being someone who doesn't see choices as a challenge or life-or-death situation, that's a good reminder. Very good.).
But notice the forward slash at the start of that paragraph (after "this morning, I prayed for a")? At that point, while I was jotting this down (in my diary though, not on this blog), God said, "check your verse of the day on your iPhone Bible app." I did. And here it is:
So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law. - Galatians 5:1
Praise the Lord.
There's nothing much else to say, except that this is not coincidence, this is the Lord. Amen.
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