Transparency....

When God starts writing a blog as you lay in bed, you honestly don't know if it's going to get published later or if it's something that should have been written in the moment. This is one that started this morning sometime and I'm thankful I didn't try to type it out yet because God's been writing on it all day. In my time with Him this morning before church, whew, it was thick...that's about all I can say and it was just me, God, and praise music. I've learned over the years though, certain songs bring about a connection that brings a power that I can't even begin to describe. It has to be felt. If we have to wait until we get to the building we call the church in order to get into the presence of God, we have something out of line. We should bring the presence with us and the connecting with other believers is where the power shows up and the glory rains down. That's a blog for another day though...

The title of this blog is the word God spoke in my Spirit as the year was becoming 2017. I didn't know exactly what He meant by that, but I was like okay God let's do it. I had pushed my way through to a certain point in my journey with Him, but I could sense higher was coming. I don't know about you, but it's not easy to climb anything when you carry a lot of extra weight or haven't worked to build up strength in the places of you that are needed to climb. God was already working and doing more than I could imagine, but He wanted more. Sometimes God lets us get to a place where we realize where that more we crave is found.....and a new level means work. A month or so later I heard that this was Restoration year, and something in my soul leaped. My heart's prayer/desire became for that. Hear my heart for a minute....God honors the requests of our hearts especially when they are in line with what He's got planned. Sometimes though we don't realize exactly what we are asking for when we are asking for it....hello for something to be restored, all of the old has to be stripped off and stuff sanded down so fresh paint can be applied. Y'all get that picture in the physical realm and then let God apply it to your walk with Him. It's a different picture for everyone....because we all have our own set of junk(anxiety, fear etc.), we all have our own set of messes that we have either dealt with or stuffed down, in short, we all have our own set of things that hold us back at times. God knows the calling He's placed on your life, the seed that was planted on the inside of you before you were born, the ministry He desires to see you walk out...and the life He dreamed you would live. What's keeping you from walking it out? Is it fear? Is it people pleasing? Is it anxiety? Is it you? God hasn't done what He's done in you to not do something through you. So many times we keep those God moments to ourselves when God's made it a fire that's meant to be spread. I'm all the time lately feeling like I'm running on empty.....and this morning God was clear, empty is a good place to be as long as we stay connected to Him...for it's when we are so empty of ourselves, that He can fill us with more of Him.

Back to transparency, I was on a road to hitting a wall of busyness. There is a difference between busyness and fruitful. Seasons look differently...and what may have been fruitful in one season, isn't in another. The whole way to see the shift is with His eyes...or to hit a wall. Hear me when I say the latter isn't so grand. I was headed down that busyness route when something rocked our community in June. A bus wreck that impacted a local church drove me to my prayer closet. My heart hurt in ways I can't describe for the family that lost a precious loved one, but my heart also hurt for those that were on the bus and would have scars that only made sense to those they shared the experience with. One of those moments led me to ask God....I just want to be found faithful to the reason I walked off the bus seven years ago. (Some of you are new to the blog and/or my Facebook and may not know what bus I'm talking about...Google Bowling Family Bus crash 2010). I saw the Restoration that was being poured out to friends already during this year, and my heart yearned to walk in what was mine to walk in. Little did I know I had some work to do before the fresh paint could be poured out. As the school year started, I felt God saying...pull back Martha and just be Mary. To be honest this scared the life out of me because I didn't know how to be at church and not do. (I still don't really....but it's getting better). So I did, I asked for some time away from basically everything I was involved in at church and started in a small group called Freedom. What God's done over the last ten weeks through that time is more than a couple of posts, it's probably a book in the making.

You can't let go of things that you don't admit are there to let go of, and you can't surrender your heart completely if you aren't willing to let Him in all areas of your heart. (Let that sink in...). I had a wall up around places of my heart and I was picky about who I let in. You can keep the wall up for so long though that you forget it's a wall. I'm thankful that two and half years ago a precious friend who knew the inside of the wall, spoke to the roots that needed to be pulled up. Your praise can demolish any wall....but it's up to you to step over the rubble that it left and walk on.  There is a fire growing on the inside of you that is meant to be shared outside of the wall.....