Some deep stuff (and some not-so-deep)

• This past weekend was the International Leadership Summit that my church heads up.  It is a meeting of both the leadership from Vineyard Phoenix, and the leaders from the churches and ministries around the nations with whom we minister.  There were people from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Zambia, Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Israel.  I cannot express the magnitude of what God does each year in the Summit.  Words truly fall short, and pictures can’t capture it.  I mentally stammer just trying to think of how to start to describe it.  Just.  No.  Words.  Suffice it to say, you wish you could have been there, even if you don’t know it!  Hahaha!
• Fiala continues to improve;  upon my return from being gone three days at the Summit, she was noticeably better.  She did great for Grandma Detta (Martin’s mom), in our absence.  What a dear little girl she is.  She’s so happy.  Pretty much the only time she’s unhappy is if she is hungry or tired… and now that she’s sleeping better at night and napping solidly, and now that we have such an array of foods to give her, she’s rarely ever cranky.
• I’ve developed a recipe for hemp milk that Fiala is now drinking.  Recipe to be posted soon!
• I’m employed!  I’m working part time as a ghost writer.  At least, that’s what the author is calling it, and I’m fine with that.  If being a ghost writer means that you clean up a manuscript, but get no credit as a co-author, I guess I’m a ghost writer!  I’m very happy to be involved in the project.
• Truly, this is simply a happy season in my life.  Not that there is widespread perfection in the many areas of my life, but in every spot, I can observe the hand of God… areas of improvement…  a light at the end of some dark tunnels… exciting times ahead…  It was spoken over me several times in the last week or so that I’m about to enter a season of both stretching beyond my normal territory and into blessing, and I feel like I’m already starting to live that.
• That said (the above bullet), God is also taking me through a time where my knowledge and sense of His love and His goodness is not regulated so much by my feelings.  God created feelings, and I think that stoicism and Christianity are opposed to one another.  Yet, on the other hand, I can get way too reliant on my circumstances and what I feel, as “evidence” (or not) of God’s love and goodness, and that’s not wise.  He’s good and loving no matter if I feel it or not, even if He doesn’t answer my prayers the way I want Him to, even if He doesn’t show up in a way I expect Him to… He’s still God.  He is also challenging me to pursue Him in the midst of not feeling Him.  I got a picture of the woman with the bleeding problem reaching out to touch Jesus, but in that time, in the crowd, BEFORE she touched Him… just reaching out to Him, reaching out, reaching out…  He’s bringing me to a new place of not getting discouraged when He doesn’t answer in the way or the time I’d prefer;  I’ve spent too much of my Christian life discouraged and lacking in perseverance, and it’s time for that to end.
• Sort of piggy-backing on the first bullet point, and the above point:  On Thursday night, at the Leadership Summit, I was singing on the worship team, and I got a sense of something I felt God wanted to say.  It was appropriate for me to sing it, so I did.  When I got done, I started thinking, as I do too often, “Oh, that didn’t come out quite right.  What I sang just wasn’t the fullness of what God was telling me.  Bummer.  I should have said…  And, oh, I forgot that part…”  And various sorts of mental butt-kicking ensued.  Then, very quickly, I felt God speak to me, “That’s OK.  Words fall short.”  Oh, my goodness!  Those three words — “words fall short” — brought such freedom to me!  It’s TRUE:  what God says, and what He does, and how He works, there just isn’t adequate language for it!  Plus, it’s not just my words, it’s the power of God behind the words!!!  Last night, at kinship (a “bonus” kinship, as I was filling in for an out-of-town worship leader), one of the ladies there talked about being ministered to on Sunday by a lady from Japan.  She said, “It’s weird.  It was so general, yet so specific.  She just said, ‘God is taking the bad memories and creating new, good memories,’ and it was so simple… yet the power behind her words was so profound, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced healing as deep or as powerful ever before, than from those simple, short words.”  I SO KNEW WHAT SHE MEANT.  Yes, I am to be obedient to the prompting of the Holy Spirit; if He’s telling me to say something, I need to say it (or sing it).  But it’s OK if my words seem to fall short, because a) His power is behind them, and b) language is simply inadequate.  ~sigh~  Freedom.  No condemnation.  God is good.