today at church clurie spoke about life with God as an adventure, but first he talked about lsitening for God and how we have to wait and be silent first.
We read samuel 3 where God calls young samuel. its a good verse, the weird thing is that i went through something last night that relates.
i heard God call my name. he does that from time to time. talk to me, its pretty awesome and everytime i sit there in awe for half a second then respond " yes lord?" the weirdest thing was that last night, as i lay there trying to go to sleep early ( so like 11:30 as opposed to 4:00) he called me in a familiar voice. so it wasn't audible. he didn't actually displace any air molecules with a for-real sound wave. but i heard it in my head. the weird thing was the voice. it was my dad's voice. but ten times stronger and more authoritative. and an hundred times more gentle and loving.
other times God has done this it never had a voice attached. it was attitudes and words, but never a voice. this voice reminded me of how samuel heard God call and went to Eli, his master.
usually when God calls my name he tells me something after. he reassures me, or tells me to encourage someone, or reminds me He loves me, or even tells me to shut up and listen. last night he put the story from Samuel 3 on my mind, and that was it.
i now realize he was prepping me to hear what Clurie(our junior high pastor and soon to be youth pastor) was going to say this morning. he talked about following God and how we need to sit and listen. then he talked about how eventually since we have to sit for a while God will call us to get off our buts and do something. something hard. something awkward. something for Him. he talked about jonathan and his armor bearer attacking the philistines, he talked about a few other things. the part Clurie ended with was a challenge. he said "don't pray for God to bless you or love you or protect you. he already does that. pray for big things. and expect big things. oh, and pray for courage, cause when you pray for big things he does them then you have to go do scary things."
pray for big things.
i'm praying for God to wake me up in the middle of the night, or to keep me up late at night, and put people on my heart. to make me unable to sleep until i pray for them.
and i'm praying specifically for some friends to experience the same thing. so if you consider me a friend, get ready to pray when you were planning on sleeping, cause God has been keeping his end of the deal for me, so he might for you too. ( i'm secifically praying for a few epople, but also just for anyone i am close too. so if you fall into either of those categories, i'm sorry, but you might be kept/woken up. and honestly i'm not sorry.)
okay, thats all for today.
shoot... now its gonna be hard for me to sleep like bryan... jk... that is awesome andrew. it sounds like he was preaching about some of the same stuff from the when god dreams conference that nate put on. especially the praying for big things (god's dreams) that we have to get up off of our butts and do something, and for courage, because discouragement and fear are two things the enemy uses to keep God's people from living out God's dreams. This is an awesome blog Andrew. I think I want to join in this with you... is that okay?
ReplyDeleteyes james, that is okay. i guess i'll let you pray for people you care about to hear form God. but thank you for asking, cuase its totally my call to make if you are allowed to or not :) wait, never mind.
ReplyDeleteHey, you should pray that God wakes me up at 5:30 or 6 instead of keeping me up all night. That would accomplish a few things: I'd still hear from God in the middle of the night--when I seem to hear Him best--and I'd become a morning person.
ReplyDeleteokay josh. will do :)
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