Romans 8:24, For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?

I stood in front my seat after I had put my handbag onto the floor in front of my feet. I placed my phone beside me after I had turned off the ringer. No noise and no distraction allowed for this moment was about pressing into God and submitting my heart to His Word.

I was sitting through a morning session for a church conference called Pursuit. The theme was Fire & Water in reference to baptism by the Holy Spirit. I am in the middle of a busy season of ministry, but this particular event was a time of participation not leadership. Sometimes the platform looks better than the pew, but this is not truth.

There are always people who are three steps ahead of us, and those who are three steps behind. I believe that should always have our hands extended on either side- reaching out to grasp the hand of the sister who has walked further than you while reaching back to grab the hand of the sister who needs a little help finding her steps forward. Know that we are always both.

So, there I was standing in the auditorium with arms stretched wide. The worship was playing and the words were filling my insatiable spirit and hungry soul.

Sometime during the session I checked the clock on my phone. It was then I noticed my phone was blowing up with an unusual amount of activity and notifications. Late last evening I had made a post on a social media page in regards to reaching out to other bloggers and encouraging them to send me the links to their blogs so that I may read their words and hear their hearts. Encouragement is our greatest asset in running the race.

And then the links began to pour in slowly but steadily. Pour. Pour. My cup was runneth over.

Commit to reading them I did. Commit to them I will. And here is the stirring of the Holy Spirit as I was paying attention to His prompting and seeking my Moses Moment this day:

They were not links but hearts in mid-beat. For most there was a brief pause of hesitation as they doubted their link, their words, their choice. They doubted I would even see it or read it. And who cares really because I am nobody. Perhaps there are some who desire to share but do not out of fear. Not to share necessarily with me, but to share at all.

I did not see long tech-y links or fancy buttons, but faceless women asking someone to pay attention. I see them because I am one of them. And I feel compelled- stirred- to share what lies beneath the surface.

I have seen many posts of overwhelmed souls fretting over the process of committing to 31 days of writing. I absolutely understand. It is a daunting task riddled with doubt and stress and the paralizing fear of failure.

I know because I did it. Not 31 days, but 365 of them. It began January 2013 and I dedicated one year of my life to writing each and every day about where this wayward child saw God- her Heavenly Father- in a moment. After a number of years working in women’s ministry as a speaker, I began to notice a common theme coming through the tears of women from all ages, backgrounds, and cultures. There are so many of God’s daughters who do not know how to identify The Lord as their Heavenly Father. Many do not have a dad either physically or emotionally present, and their perceptions of God are on a human level. I think that many struggle understanding the fear of The Lord and are really just afraid of God.

I know for I am the fatherless daughter, once abandoned and left wandering in the wilderness. A child who grew up being churched her whole life no less. Yes, I was the wayward child with hungry eyes desperately trying to find her way home.

I put one particular scripture into practice during this spiritual journey:

Romans 8:28, And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,[a] for those who are called according to his purpose.

I will tell you it was the most difficult experience of my life. About halfway through the project I emotionally broke. My writing became more and more raw. I began to beg Jesus for His eyes and not my own, for the desires of my heart radically changed. My heart began to break for what broke His.

I changed. Jesus changed me because an emotional breaking always precedes a spiritual awakening. 

I call them my Moses Moments. The encounters we have with God. The burning bushes we seek in order to know that He is real and that He cares for us. But we need to pay attention in order to hear Him speak through the fire.

Vulnerability is a gift of freedom you offer others in order for them to walk in vulnerability as well. I choose each and every day to allow vulnerability to be my companion.

I felt called to write the journey in the form of a blog on my ministry website. I continued to work and travel, preaching the Word at conferences and women’s events, all the while my soul was being splattered upon the pages of my blog. My ugliness, and the spiritual journey of working out my faith in a broken and bruised world, became my temporary identity.

Yes, Jesus was changing me. Oh, my shame that I still need to change that much more. And changing I am continuing to do.

Promotion became my fear for the working out of one’s complete trust in Jesus is so personal, and I was terrible at it having to have The Lord cut me off at the knees a few times. But, by the grace of God, people from all walks of life read it. Thousands of them. I do not know thousands of people. But lest you think that is some special feat, or that my name is known anywhere, know that no one- no one- ever commented on my blog. No one shared words of encouragement or praise as I ran the race to win it.

No one.

Not long after my emotional breaking, The Lord revealed to my wayward heart why no one every did. Perhaps no one every will. I was nearing the end of the project at this point, three quarters of the way through. The reason He hovered His hand over it, not allowing others to throw their voice my way, is because then I would not have written it for Him.

What I was doing, all that I was trying to accomplish, was for Him. Not for you, not for me. That does not mean that it didn’t hurt or that I was not battling loneliness through the process. But the truth is not meant to hurt us, but help us. And it did help me for my strength to finish the race came directly from His water-filled well.

In the words of Christine Caine, there is a time- precious time- that each of us must spend in the darkroom. If we try to push open doors that are not meant for us, we will just end up with bruised toes.

The last year of my life has been a whirlwind as the door to the darkroom opened after almost a decade of serving, growing, and stretching.  It was presented to me to create a manuscript from my project, so I did. In the editing I had to go back and re-read all of the horrible, narcissistic ramblings from my soul and remove them. By the time I had rewritten to day 174, The Lord had me go back to day 1 and re-write it again. I was six weeks away from a writer’s conference and my publisher meetings. Apparently there was still more of me to be removed from the inky black and white pages. More heart pouring. More soul searching. God required more of me. In honesty, I struggled to give it.

But I was running this race. I was going to finish. And I am still running. The project has been completed to my own ability and I am satisfied in knowing that it- all of it- may just be for Him. I am sitting at a darkened door waiting for Him to open it. Perhaps He may ask me to get up and walk down a different hallway; walk through a different door.

The world has a way of lifting individuals upon shaky platforms only to knock them down. A platform built upon anything other than Jesus will crumble and fall. A platform built upon Jesus will make one feel whole.

You are not a blogger. You are a writer pouring out your heart onto a WordPress page. Whether you write about praise, pregnancy, or pickles, may your words bring Him the glory.

The truth is that we are all just a bunch of nobody’s who should be trying to bring glory to the only somebody who matters: Jesus. Know that we must write for an audience of One. I still struggle nearly every day with my writing wondering if anyone will even want to read it. And if they do, why?

So that our words may bring life to the heart who has taken the time to read it. That’s why. I pray that each and every sister that ministers to the heart of one may reap a bounty and minister to the hearts of many. And if we are going to minister to others, we must be humble and hungry enough to allow others to minister to us. May the words of our mouths and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing to Him.

No, we are not bloggers, we are hope chasers. The hope we seek begins with obedience. The obedience to commit to something bigger than ourselves. The obedience to take the descriptive lingerings that are pressed upon our hearts and bleed them through our souls. And it takes an overwhelming amount of obedience to press on while listening to the inner critic telling you to stop, allow the cramping to make you pause, and consider bowing out of the race before you’ve even caught the next wind.

Keep on running dear sisters and press on. Press on.

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