Seen Ways, Counted Steps

I had such a good day yesterday. It started off a little hectic, and I was in a bad mood, but things turned around eventually. When I worship God – I mean really worship Him – things just seem to fade into the background. I had so many things running through my mind yesterday morning, and I can’t stand it when I detach myself from what I’m doing when I sing and the words mean nothing. Pastor prayed for a fresh anointing over me a couple of weeks ago – not just to sing, but an anointing to worship. An anointing that causes God’s presence to come. I think I would take that over a better voice any day of the week, honestly.

Anyway, while I was worshiping yesterday – I wasn’t focusing on anything or anyone but God – God just spoke to me about something that I’ve been needing an answer for for about eight months. And if I’m being completely honest, I’ve needed an answer for more like 11 years. It’s funny how God doesn’t give you an answer when you think you really, really need it. I wasn’t even asking for an answer. I was just lovin’ on Him the only way I know how. If I had had my answer a year ago I could have saved myself a lot of heartache. I can only assume that He waited until now for a reason, though. I’m just glad I have an answer. Now I can really let go, because more than what I want, I want what God wants – and who God wants – for me. Maybe I can love again now without being afraid.

Not only that, but during Intercessory Prayer Sunday school, everything Sean was talking about was right where I’ve been the past few months. One of my main problems is that I overanalyze everything. I overanalyze, and I compare. I compare my life to others, and I never feel good enough. I never feel quite up-to-par. Or, I get angry because I see those around me who have made mistakes, who live for themselves, etc. and they prosper and seem so happy while I feel like I’m stuck. But what Sean was speaking about was that we didn’t have to do that. God gives us anointing and gifting particularly to be put into our own specific, genuine spirits. We each have our own unique seasons. I work in an office eight hours of a day, so I can’t go out witnessing all over town. I see the same people. I can witness to them, but they’re the only ones I see. That doesn’t make me any less of a Christian, it just means that I’m in a different season than someone else. Now, that isn’t an excuse for not witnessing ever.

And Pastor preached about the same thing during the service! And then, I read this Psalm this morning:

Psalm 73

[[A Psalm of Asaph.]]

Truly God [is] good to Israel, [even] to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, [when] I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For [there are] no bands in their death: but their strength [is] firm. They [are] not in trouble [as other] men; neither are they plagued like [other] men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them [as] a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly [concerning] oppression: they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. Therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full [cup] are wrung out to them. And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High? Behold, these [are] the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase [in] riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart [in] vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning. If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend [against] the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, it [was] too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; [then] understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they [brought] into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when [one] awaketh; [so], O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins. So foolish [was] I, and ignorant: I was [as] a beast before thee. Nevertheless I [am] continually with thee: thou hast holden [me] by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me [to] glory. Whom have I in heaven [but thee]? and [there is] none upon earth [that] I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: [but] God [is] the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. But [it is] good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.

So, God has definitely been dealing with my heart lately. He’s been mending and cutting and doing some serious surgery, but I am so thankful that He doesn’t think I’m too far gone to do anything. I know that something bright and beautiful is just over the horizon if I can just wait and let Him work on me.

I love love LOVE this song! Jon McLaughlin is awesome, and Beyonce is awesome, so them together...is pretty freakin' awesome.

On my lunch break.

I just had some really good sweet and sour chicken from Healthy Choice. I have lost a total of 15 pounds since January! Go me!

I'm in the Director's Office training again. Wondering if I'm really going to be able to handle all of this formality and what-not. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

I bought Casting Crown's latest cd Until the Whole World Hears yesterday off Walmart.com. I am an avid promoter of walmart.com mp3 downloads, now. They're pretty awesome. Anyway, I've never been a big fan of Casting Crowns. I've never been a big fan of contemporary Christian music, honestly. I love Praise & Worship - I'm all for Hillsong and JesusCulture and Brian and Jenn Johnson. But so much Contemporary Christian music blends together and sounds the same to me. BUT, Casting Crowns' songs always tug at my heartstrings when I happen upon one on 90.7 Way Radio. I can tell just by the conviction I get my listening to their music that it is prayed over. It's not just a job for them. They're not just expressing their artistic talents.

There is one song that is right where I am spiritually right now...or, at least, where I'm attempting to be. I'm calling myself free, even though I don't feel free. And I'm saying that I'm laying all of my shame, nervousness, stress, pain...all of this bad stuff down at the cross, even though I don't feel like I really can. With God I can do anything.

Here at Your feet, I lay my past down
My wanderings, all my mistakes down
And I am free

Here at Your feet, I lay this day down
Not in my strength, but in Yours I’ve found
All I need, You’re all I need

Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet
Oh, to dwell and never leave
Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet
There is nowhere else for me
There is nowhere else for me

Here at Your feet, I lay my future down
All of my dreams, I give to You now
And I find peace, I find peace
Here at Your feet, I lay my life down
For You my King, You’re all I want now
And my soul sings…

‘Cause I am free (here at Your feet)
All I need (is at Your feet)
I find peace
We’re at Your feet
We’re at Your feet

And I am free (here at Your feet)
All I need (is at Your feet)
I find peace
We’re at Your feet
We’re at Your feet
We’re at Your feet
We’re at Your feet

Here at Your feet
I lay my life down


Whenever I hear a song like this that I can relate to so well, I so very much want to sing it in church. I guess because I know that if I had the opportunity to sing this I would mean it on a different level then if I sang something about dancing, etc.

I messed up bad yesterday. I let my stupid mouth get away with me and blurted out something about someone that was true, but I shouldn't have said anything. I immediately was convicted, which I was thankful for. I am glad I can still be convicted. The problem is, satan has this habit of trying to make me beat myself up about my mistakes...to the point that I wonder what the point of trying is anymore. Which isn't the way it's supposed to be. So, I told myself that I would start over. I would try again, and maybe do better tomorrow.

I woke up this morning with an ache in my chest. It's something that I've gotten used to for the past eight months...and that in itself should tell me something. That I could get used to something like that isn't normal, or healthy. I had someone tell me that I needed to let go a couple of days ago. I met him...maybe two weeks ago?

Someone I just met told me I needed to let go, and I immediately shut down on him. I got angry. Maybe I got angry because I've been telling myself that for a long, long time, but nothing seems to have changed. I realized this morning that I missed who I used to be. Even if I was shy and hardly spoke at all when I was younger, at least I didn't say bad things. I didn't criticize other people to make myself feel better about myself. I didn't get up and leave in the middle of a service because having to stare at my sweetest downfall for two hours nearly drove me over the edge.

I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted to with God again this morning. I don't know why it's been so hard for me to wake up lately. It wasn't a problem during the fast - and maybe that's exactly why. Fasting always gives me some kind of renewed vigor, God's joy being my strength and all of that good jazz. Anyway, the little time I did spend with Him was a reminder of why I can believe in God when I can't see Him. No other person or thing in this world can make me feel as joyful inside as being alone with Him can. The peace that passes all understanding, the unspeakable joy I have with Jesus in the same room as me is all of the evidence I need.

I told God I didn't need answers if I could just be with Him. If I could just see Him, knowing that He told me He would never leave me or forsake me in the midst of my own storms, attacks by the enemy and my own personal, selfish mistakes - if He's just with me through it all, I know I can hang on. I know things will change eventually. Time brings change, and change takes time. But He is faithful. I've never met someone so faithful through everything. Even though Scott died - God is faithful. He won't forsake the promises He's given me. He won't let me drown while I walk across this water and start falling.

Stacie was praying for me during intercessory prayer on Sunday, and she told me to just start speaking the truth.

So, here's my truth:

Lynsey is a woman of God.

I am free.

I am loved.

I am whole.

I will walk in the destiny and calling that God has over my life. I will do His will for me.

I will wait for the person God has for me. And he is coming - we will find each other, in God's timing, in God's grace, in God's way. We will be sexually pure while we are courting, and when we start courting, it won't be out of need or loneliness or to get over someone else. When we find each other, we won't be damaged. We will simply love. We'll just fit. We will come together because God put us together.

I am not afraid.

My lost friends and family will be saved.

Xin and his family will come to know Jesus.

Me and my family's finances will be blessed in abundance.

Laura, Anslie, April, Amy & Richard, Brian and Amanda, and Scott and Laura's family are healed. What has happened will only make their faith stronger.

Abundant Life Fellowship will be the lighthouse, the church, the bride of Christ that it has been called to be.

Melody and Christian will grow up in love with God.

I will make a difference.

I will learn to be self-disciplining and self-sacrificing. I will learn the guitar and the piano. I will write music from my heart that glorifies God. I will be healthy. I will be wise. I will be a hard worker. I will be faithful over things great and small.

I am called by name. I am the head and not the tail, I am above and not beneath.

Psalm 69

Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto [my] soul. I sink in deep mire, where [there is] no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, [being] mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored [that] which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord GOD of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. When I wept, [and chastened] my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth also my garment; and I became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I [was] the song of the drunkards. But as for me, my prayer [is] unto thee, O LORD, [in] an acceptable time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. Hear me, O LORD; for thy lovingkindness [is] good: turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. And hide not thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble: hear me speedily. Draw nigh unto my soul, [and] redeem it: deliver me because of mine enemies. Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour: mine adversaries [are] all before thee. Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked [for some] to take pity, but [there was] none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become a snare before them: and [that which should have been] for [their] welfare, [let it become] a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate; [and] let none dwell in their tents. For they persecute [him] whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous. But I [am] poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. [This] also shall please the LORD better than an ox [or] bullock that hath horns and hoofs. The humble shall see [this, and] be glad: and your heart shall live that seek God. For the LORD heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners. Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moveth therein. For God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah: that they may dwell there, and have it in possession. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that love his name shall dwell therein.

I have a little free time on my hands at work, so I decided I would get this blog rolling. I'm sitting in the Director's Office..."filling in" for whenever they officially hire someone for this position. I'm not really looking forward to spending the next four weeks here. I shouldn't complain about it - it's experience. And I'm getting out there. Just hard to see the good in it in a time like right now, though.

So, Nena, what's up, girl?

I ask myself that question a lot. Maybe it's kind of silly, but I'll just look at myself in the mirror and ask myself that question, and feel like I can be completely honest. There's a part of me that is so ruined and devastated, and then there's a part of me that just knows that there is something bigger and greater out there for me. It's funny how often you can see yourself in two different ways.

I tried to make it a point to spend time with God before I went to work this morning. With me taking Christian to daycare before I went to work for the past couple of weeks, that's been one of the things I've missed out on (unfortunately). I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted to with Him this morning, though. I wonder sometimes how cheated God feels when I don't spend the time with Him that He deserves, and I wonder why it doesn't bother me more.

I am so selfish. When it does start to bother me a lot, when it feels like I can't breathe if I can't get alone with Him - that's when I make it a point to spend my mornings with Him. It shouldn't be that way. He deserves all of me, all of the time.

But, like the sun, He is faithful, and He takes whatever time I give Him and still shows up, even when I don't deserve it. I know that if a guy only spent time with me when it was convenient for him and he felt like it, and not when I wanted to...we would have a problem. But God isn't prideful that way, and He doesn't hold grudges. He doesn't hold Himself back from me, even when I hurt Him.

I cranked up some Hillsong while I was driving to work, because I didn't get enough time alone with Him at home, and Brooke Fraser's version of "Nothing but the Blood" came on, and I started boo-hooing the way I always do when I hear her sing that. "What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus..." always gets me. Because I don't feel whole inside...I feel like there's this big, ugly, jagged mark right down the center of my heart. It's the first and only thing you see when you look at me. "She's jaded."

But I know that no matter what things look like, or feel like, I'm whole...because He makes me whole. He fills in all the empty places with every good and perfect gift that COMES from God. Grace, love, mercy, joy...

"How precious is the flow..." comes on, and all I can think about is Jesus on the cross, blood flowing and dripping off the woodwork and onto the soil, and Him thinking of me as it happens. Him dreaming of me, of my love...like my love is worth all of that suffering. And that blood flowing over my heart, breathing life into my veins, cleaning and washing away all of my self-induced pain. All of my sin that causes me suffering. My own mistakes, my own anger, my own choices...and all of it gone, like it was never there.

"How precious is the flow that makes me white as snow." I try and think of white things, and I suddenly get a visual image of a pearl in an oyster. The meaty part of the oyster is all corroded and twisted, scarred and forming around that beautiful, clean, white pearl...and I think of my heart. How deformed it is, how often it is changed and driven by emotion and not by love. And then something is inserted into it...maybe something hard, something small but aggravating to the flesh of that oyster.



It isn't pretty. The only thing pretty about that picture is the pearl itself. And God speaks to my heart and tells me suddenly that bad things happen to me, and they hurt and they're uncomfortable, but something so beautiful is formed in the midst of all of that destruction. What I go through becomes something beautiful...becomes a ministry, a testimony, or makes me a little bit more like Him...and ME, all of that flesh in ME gets torn up and wastes away in the process, and I have to learn to get used to that. I have to learn to get used to sacrificing pieces of myself so that I can be more like Him.

And I'm alright all of a sudden, and all of the chaos in me is resolved for the moment...just because I was alone with the Lover and Adorer of my heart. And I wonder how I could ever take moments with Him like that for granted, how I could ever think I could find joy and peace and love like that from anyone or anything else. I wonder why I waited so long to be with Him, why I didn't do this everyday.

If I could just learn to shut my stupid mouth and quit speaking so much negativity...complaining of how much it hurts, how betrayed and angry I feel...and if I could just learn to be still and know that He is God. So, that is my goal. To shut my yapper. To trust Him and know that something good - something precious and rare and beautiful - is being formed in me.