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The more I seek you
The more I find you
The more I find you
The more I love you

I wanna sit at your feet
Drink from the cup in your hand
Lay back against you and breathe
Feel your heart beat
This love is so deep
It's more than I can stand
I melt in your peace
It's overwhelming

These are the lyrics to a song we sang at church today. I sat at church this morning and my mind was trying to find the words to make sense of what I was thinking. I felt enveloped by God's presence. I sang this song and I was so overwhelmed because I meant it. I mean, for a long time I went to church and sang because, well, because that is just what you are supposed to do. Then eventually I reached a point that I was singing, but the lyrics were hard sometimes because I was not sure I really meant them.

Today I sang. I just sang, and my audience was not the other people in the room, but it was the Lord. I sang and I meant the words I sang. I know that the more I seek Him, the more I find Him. I know the more of Him I find the deeper I fall in Love with Him. I sat in church for a long time thinking that most of the people in that room were no different than me. That they were just singing because they were supposed to, or singing thinking they wished they believed the words, or maybe not, maybe they were scared too really believe.

I've been all those people. Some days still, I want so desperately to see Jesus, to be changed by Jesus, but I get a little afraid because I know He may actually do it. He may really change my heart. He may really ask me to be more than I am ready to be, to give up more than I want to give up. This is a beautifully written post that speaks to this same thing (but with much greater elegance than I can muster).

The sermon today was about what keeps us from sharing our faith. Our pastor came up with 4 points, all of them are valid, but two resonated especially with me. The four points are indifference, fear, skepticism(meaning other peoples skepticism of God and of hypocritical Christians), and discouragement from lack of results. The two that I know the most in my own life are indifference and fear.

For a long time it just did not matter to me where other people were spiritually. I have always enjoyed a good religious debate but most of the time I found people to be a bit extreme in their belief or they had the whatever works for you attitude. There was not really a happy medium that I could see. It did not really matter to me all that much because I believed that God was God and that if He was Lord and Creator of all then all roads must eventually lead to Him, and what about all the good people around me? I do not believe that anymore. I could believe that because I did not have any kind of biblical understanding of who Jesus said He was and who the bible presents as Lord. Jesus tells us their is no way to the Father but through Him (John 14:6) and He says that the road that leads to eternal life is narrow while the road that leads to death is wide and many find it(Matthew 7:13-14). Now, I also know that Jesus loves people! He desires for none to perish. The more I know the Father the more desperate I become for other people to know Him. The more time I spend with Him the stronger His heartbeat for this world becomes. Our pastor made the statement during the sermon that when people saw the Power of God they had to respond. They could no longer be indifferent. Wow! That hit me hard because I know it is true. I know God, I know that He is powerful, and I know that this knowledge has brought me to a point of no longer being indifferent.

This simple reality has caused me quite a bit of pain and discomfort...because I do care. The scab has been pulled off of my hard heart. I have been left open to the pain of caring about people and their salvation, of wanting to desperately share Him with those around me, but being paralyzed with fear, unable to move. That is a hard spot to be in and is one I am all too familiar with. What do I fear? I fear you, I fear rejection, I fear being vulnerable. The more I come to know Jesus the more I realize that nothing excites me quite the way He does. Nothing challenges me and changes me quite the way He does. Nothing gets under my skin and makes me tick quite the way He does. Nothing is capable of captivating my thoughts quite the way He does. Of course this is true...He made me, I made to know Him, to live for Him, to worship Him!

At this point in my life it is hard for me to share who I am without sharing who He is. I pray daily that I continue to become less and He continue to become greater. As I am transformed by Him, it gets hard to make sense out of who I am without sharing a bit about who He is. I did get a chance to write a bit about the Fear to Freedom women's retreat that I went to a few weeks back. Prior to the retreat I began to sense that the Lord had a message for me to hear. He did have a message for me. He wanted me to realize that He was become greater in my life. He was becoming more and that I was beginning to move from head knowledge to heart knowledge. I was beginning to really believe who He is. It was the same kind of experience I had today. One when I just knew, that I knew, that I know who He is. One when I got to sit in awe of who He is is and how He works. Another comment made in the sermon today was that maybe it is possible to be so engaged in faith that you don't even think about fear. Well, I am not to that point, but I am moving that direction. I realized that the past 5 years have been about teaching me how to really believe Him, how to really trust Him. Not just to say it, not just to sing it, but to believe it. Their really is a world of difference in that. He has been using different acts of obedience and seeking to prepare me to fall recklessly. Their is something I love about the idea of reckless abandon into Jesus' arms. When I am fully in His arms, I can rest no mater what the circumstance. When I am fully with Him I am free from fear because His perfect love casts out fear.