vision (prophetic or not)

a couple of us just came back from the oneThing conference in Kansas City, put on by the International House of Prayer. a four and a half hour drive, i must admit that when we walked into the building, you could feel something different. there was just something different everywhere, you could feel a desire for God and His Spirit in the air. it was refreshing, and part of me wondered how any of us could spend the entire day praying and going to seminars all day, literally speaker after speaker, song after song. i had never talked to God as much as i had than this past weekend, never pursued as heavily as what just happened.

i heard things that i've never heard before, things that i didn't know had anything to do with the Christianity i had subscribed to. i have been presented a side of God that i have never understood or stressed before, i have realized a tiny bit more how magnificent and impossible and changing His love really is. i have realized that the Bible has books like Hosea and Song of Solomon, things i had never known to be in the Bible. i have been lifted and sustained higher than i could have ever imagined, and some crazy things that i will never be able to explain nor forget.

i realized that when the Holy Spirit hits, when it's time, everything changes. absolutely everything changes. you start to become desperate, you start to see things you've never seen and feel things you've never felt and do things you could never do under any other circumstances. you know things you shouldn't know, you pray things and recklessly abandon your life in a way that you cannot do without your eyes being opened to God and His consuming fire.

we came back to a New Year's Party at church with the rest of our youth group and we ended up playing a short worship set to pass the time. it was good, no doubt, but one of us began to get mad. things had been so easy, so focused in Kansas City - so much that you could literally feel it in the air - and now we had come back, no offense, to some who had not just been through the things we had been through. i really mean no offense, but it was like we had just been presented with this amazing life we didn't even know could have been our God, and we didn't and don't want to just give it all away for what we had before. we had just made all of these commitments and felt the desire to really keep them, and instantly, it was all going to be challenged. i guess we were being faced with a choice.

and you know, i just don't want to settle anymore. i've seen this great life and this great God and we've talked a lot about how being able to invest in God wholly is what is really going to satisfy and i don't want to settle anymore. i don't want my life to be displeasing to God, especially knowing that i'm only hurting myself. i don't want to delve into my sin, i want to be separate from it. i don't want to make amends with darkness, i want to touch and taste the divine.

---i wrote this New Year's Day and haven't continued until now---

it's gotta be God. billy and i are probably going to push for Friday night to be...big. we're gonna try to push it. not to say we'll manipulate the people who show up and not to say we'll manipulate the Holy Spirit - God will show up in that kind of life changing way if He wants and due to other factors i don't know. if it's God's timing, which we're hoping that it is, things will be incredible. if it's not, we really shouldn't push it. at the same time, i think we can be disappointed, but it's still no reason to turn on God. God is God, He does no wrong. and He's writing the story. i seriously hope we break through though and that God's presence explodes into our church.

i hope i'm not heretic or crazy. following a weekend of knowing God in a way different from simply feeling God... man, i don't want to be wrong. i don't want to claim Godliness, i want it to claim me, you know? i don't want to tell people i'm a Christian, i want people to be able to see for themselves. i don't want to spiritually immature. i don't want to be prideful and boastful and yet deceive myself to think i am humble. i want a real relationship with God, and i don't want to just tell myself that. i want the passion to be there, not to settle, not to choose apathy and convenience over the narrow road that is where Jesus is leading.

i make mistakes. i know i make mistakes, more than i know what to do with. i'm less than perfect. far less than perfect. you don't even want to get me started on immaturity. but where is my heart? if my heart is wholly given over to God, i don't think anything else matters. i will continue to fall and stumble, but God... know my heart. be my judge, my only judge.