Prayer Room 1.15.11 Song of Songs

As I was in the prayer room I was reading in Song of Songs. If you don’t know much about Song of Songs the whole book is God’s love story to us. It is His poem book to us where He wants to show us how intimate He is and how He wants to be our lover and wants to marry us. After my roommate was prophesied over about the Shulammite woman, I wanted to know more about this Shulammite woman. I wanted to become this Shulammite woman during my Pursuit journey. All I knew was that she comes out of the desert and she is leaning on her beloved and she had grown so close to him during the wilderness that she is still leaning on him even as she’s walking out of it. I didn’t have a clue where this woman was talked about in the book so I started at the beginning and just began to read it through. I didn’t really learn much more about the Shulimmite woman in Song of Songs, but God opened me to some other things that just hit me like a pin piercing my heart. I’m just going to go in order of the scriptures and what God showed me about them.  

Song of Songs 1:6, “Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother’s sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have neglected”. I heard a sermon from the awakening services about this verse and while I couldn’t remember everything that was mentioned about it I thought that it was talking about how we had neglected our vineyards, and we had neglected ourselves and our gifts we give to God, our spiritual gifts. I was reminded of this and felt convicted that I too had neglected my vineyard. I had neglected to take care of it and tend to its weeds. That means I had neglected my gifts I give to God because I felt so far from Him, I couldn’t connect with Him the way I wanted to. I had totally abandoned my vineyard in search for something better to fill my fairytale garden that I wanted to make up. Then it says verse 2:15, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom”. I felt like God was saying I had let foxes in my vineyard, sly foxes that were only out to steal, kill, and destroy. I felt like I had let the foxes in and they ate the buds that were about to bloom. They ate my spiritual gifts, I allowed them to eat the buds that were about to bloom. The little buds that I did have that were still developing and they ate them. My heart aches for this; God is still working on me about this and teaching me to forgive.

I felt totally gut wrenched and over come with intense emotion, when I read Song of Songs 5:2-8, “I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking; ‘Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.’ I have taken off my robe- must I put it on again? I have washed my feet- must I soil them again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock. I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him, but did not find him. I called him, but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen on the walls! O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you- if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.” I felt like for most of these verses God was speaking to me telling me this is how he feels about me. How He has wanted me to open the door to Him and invite Him inside to reside for forever and give me hope and security. How He eagerly wants me to see how He pursues me like how He looks for his lost sheep, but when it came to the verse, “My lover thrust his hand through the latch- opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock. I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure.” For a moment I had a visual that He was answering the door and He was looking outside for me. Like He had come to answer the door to let me in, but I was already gone. I had already left. As if I was tired of waiting for Him, or maybe just scared, or not ready for Him to answer the door and so I decided to leave. It was all too familiar to me, I felt like I had been there so many times, like He was telling me this is the story of our life and this is our constant game of peek-a-boo or let me run to you when I need you, but when I can’t find you or don’t want to wait for you let me run away, back to my make believe vineyard where I was deceptively “safe”.  Just the look of Jesus eyes in the vision made me want to cry, like He had such hope on His face such excitement to open His door and see who loves Him, who came to see Him, but as He opens the door He finds no one there. He looks out the door in search for me and with such unyielding, unrelenting, accepting, and loving passion for me He searches through the streets asking people if they have seen His Beloved, His Long Lost Lover, His Friend, but they hadn’t seen anyone in sight. Oh it just broke my heart. It made me want to cry and apologize and meet Him even more to spend time with Him and make up for all that long lost time. As I think about this a Matt Gilman and Misty Edwards song comes to mind, the words are “All I want is just to know your heart and would you keep me here until we’re one”. This is my heart’s desire, for me to know Him more by spending time with Him. God, give me an unrelenting passion for you, a passion more jealous than the grave. And Please, God, let me never neglect my vineyard for anyone other than you or leave the doorways that you have planted in front of me that help me grow to be the person you have birthed me to be.    

My 1st experience at IHOP ATL's Church 1.9.11

I knew the whole process of me coming to IHOP was just a God thing. FYI -If you don’t believe in God then you will just not get this or understand a lot of what I write about for the next three months. You won’t understand how things just made sense for me, or how things came together only by His grace and redeeming love. One thing I did want to record was that I had been mad at my Dad since New Year’s day and the day that these things I’m writing about took place was the 9th. I had been mad at him before this point, but it was pretty much buried deep inside me with calluses on the surface of my heart. Like something that had been silently rubbing and rubbing for years and growing bigger that had yet to grow a knot and become a real painful nuisance. Let me remind you it was a callous not a zit maybe more like a wart too.  However, the feelings had become so strong on me since NY’s day that I was recently an emotional mess, it felt like it had developed into a zit or a wart since it was starting to hurt. NY’s day, it was like he made everything he ever said to me -all the negative things from my whole life, that I could remember, come rushing back like a flood. A flood that makes your eyes float. Of course the devil was throwing his lies in too and making me feel a LOT worse. I was an emotional mess. Feelings that I hated, hated myself for, and that I just couldn’t take anymore came to my mind and attacked me from the 1-9th. I was so tired of living in this bondage of living for him and trying to please him – even though I felt like he could never be pleased. Such a wretched feeling and maybe the root of it was that I didn’t feel that he loved me and that he was pleased with me. That’s probably what I longed for the most. That just feeling of acceptance and security from him that I could never really put a finger on till now. 

We left early Sunday morning and drove 3.5 hours to Atlanta and arrived 30 minutes prior to the service starting. When I entered the sanctuary there were people praying and there was someone playing the piano, playing some sweet meditating music. The room really felt anointed, I knew the presence of the Lord was present and because of this I think I felt like I was going to cry. It was like I felt so heavy walking into the room, like I had dragged this huge trunk in with me that held all my fears, hurts, and pain. I sat there next to my dad and my mom sat next to him and I don’t remember why I started crying but I did. I think I was so overwhelmed. It felt so surreal that I was going to this IHOP Atlanta internship and for the first time in a really long time, it just felt like it was right. I think maybe it was like a release from the whirlwind of things that took place in the last month and I was probably having some anxiety about the future and my new beginnings. I think what really got me was that I was leaving my parents for the first time and I was so mad at them. I was so bitter towards them for some reason. I was mad at my father for what happened on New Year’s Day and it just made me so upset and totally ravished me. My eyes began to water at the thought of them leaving and me being mad at them and I just felt like I wanted to cry. My mom leaned forward to ask me something and when she saw I was crying she came and sat next to me and maybe tried to hold my hand or something. I don’t remember clearly. But the next thing I know my head is somehow falling to my right and lands on my dad’s shoulder- this is so not me! I felt like I was fighting my flesh to stay sitting straight up, but that’s what happened and when that happened my mom was trying to get my dad to lift his arm and put it around me to hold me. He held me with one arm as I wept bitterly and just basked in the act of my father holding me because I really couldn’t remember the last time he had held me and I couldn’t really remember the last time I had hugged him. I felt like a little girl again. I felt like a mere child as I didn’t fight my flesh and allowed my father to hold me and show that he loved me as much as he physically could. As I just sat there taking it all in, crying, and trying to hold onto these sweet moments that would soon be a fleeting memory, I had realized this was why we got there early. God knew I needed this time with my father, these few precious minutes that I had dreaded was like a pumice stone against my calloused heart for him. And now the healing that I have longed for can begin. I can make a stake that one day I will forgive my father for the things he has done and the things he hasn’t done. I know we are not perfect and we have major communication issues probably rooted in insecurities and fear of man/ lack of boldness, but I can finally walk in the confidence that my father cares for me and loves me. Thus, now that my earthly father has given me this confirmation of his love and it was tangible, it’s so much easier to grasp that my heavenly father loves me and it too is tangible, so tangible.

My Testimony I sent to IHOP written Fall 2010

Personal journey in Christ: I was raised in a Christian home and grew up going to a Christian school. I was very active in my school and church, learning to volunteer at a young age.  When I graduated from high school I went to a community college to pursue nursing and still stayed active in my church. I volunteered on Saturdays with the neighborhood outreach, went on some mission trips, and learned I really liked to work with kids, babies, and refugees. I have a heart for them and mission work.

While I did all these great things of outreach, mission work, and attending church regularly, I felt like I was going back and forth between God and the world. I wanted to pursue God and what He had for me, but friends and boys were a very big distraction. I volunteered and had a heart to serve God and his people, yet I wanted a tangible relationship. I guess at the time I didn’t see God as something tangible. I struggled for years playing hot and cold until one day God knocked me on my butt and I had to totally become selfless and rely on him. At the time I was in a very hard place and He met me that day in my weakness. It was the tangibleness I had been looking for the whole time, but for some things I felt I was too late. I had lived the way I wanted to and had to deal with the scars I had created for the rest of my life.

 Looking back at everything, I have a lot of regrets, but God is working with me on them. He is showing me that He is refining the fire. He has told me he is going to give me beauty for ashes as I place myself at His throne whole hearted and wait for Him in expectation. I’m at the point where I’m ready for Him and to see what He has for me as I wait in anticipation for Him to reveal it. There are a few scriptures that He showed me recently, and I just had a quickening in my spirit that they are for me right now in my life. They are, Isaiah 43: 18 -19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the waste land.”   Psalm 143:8, “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.”  Psalm 33: 20-22, “We will wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you”.  As I read these scriptures I can’t help to think about my future and see what God has for me. I am finally excited about my life and to see a change. I feel like He is making a way in the desert, but only as I sit and wait for him and trust in Him. When he met me that day I realized I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. I had to yield myself in reckless abandonment to Him. Misty Edwards says how I feel, the best way, in her song Lovesick, “I am lovesick, for my Beloved, my Beloved and my friend”. This is how I feel, I ache with an anticipation to know Him better, to see Him more clearly, and for Him to show me things He has wanted to show me that I have never wanted to see or that I wasn’t ready to see. It feels like that last present under the tree that you don’t want to open, because you don’t realize that it’s for you. I didn’t believe something so good could be for me.

The Beginning of Hearing my Beloved Fall 2010

I don’t remember exactly when it was birthed that I wanted to go to IHOP. In the beginning it’s all kind of fuzzy when I think about it now. I used to watch the web streams and say, “I want to go there someday. God is going to deliver me there. I just knew He had  something for me there”. I had this yearning to go for awhile. So I started to pray about going to do an internship. I asked my friend about it since she did an internship a few years ago.  She definitely recommended it to me so I began to think and pray about going to do one. I told God, “If you want me to go, I need another job to incorporate with my other jobs, I need more money so I can go”. 

Within a week a lady finds my profile on Care.com.  She says she wants me to work for her on the weekends while she travels with her husband to the races- assuming maybe they were just die hard race fans- No they weren’t. I met her and her boys in a big house on Lake Norman and it turns out they owned a racing team. I knew God was blessing me and that it was just a God thing that she found me, out of everyone else on the website. Every time this lady paid me, she overpaid me and I knew it was Gods tangible blessing on me. So I began to work regularly my 3 jobs and save my money, even though at this point I had not even applied for the IHOP internship.  I realized God had given me this job, but I started to get confused about what God wanted me to do. I had just sealed the deal with this lady to work for her, but she would need me during the internship. I didn’t know if I was supposed to stay and work the job I had committed to or go to Atlanta. So I then told God that I needed confirmation that He wanted me to go to the internship. A day or two later, I was at work and I took the baby to the park. I was upset about something. I was on the phone with my friend just telling her how I didn’t know how much longer I was supposed to be working for this family. I felt like my time with them was coming to an end. And even though I had grown so close to the baby and dependent on it to give me the love I needed I knew God was calling me to Him, for me to depend on His love. I knew it was coming to an end I just didn’t know how soon, but I had this yearning inside me that I was supposed to start the year off right for once. That God wanted me whole hearted and that He wanted me to do this Pursuit internship in January.

So I am talking with mt friend telling her all this saying, “I just don’t know what God has for me and I need Him to tell me, preferably soon”. As I was leaving the park a girl goes running by me and waves then she stops running and starts walking towards me and I’m trying to convince myself that shes not coming to talk to me.I hang up the phone with my friend as she starts getting closer says, “Hey, I’m a nanny and I’m new to the area, are you a nanny?” I say, “Yes, I am”. And she says, “Well, I’m from Georgia and I just didn’t know if you knew of anything or had any ideas for me to get a nanny job and kind of get acclimated to the area”. I told her there were a few nanny websites she could apply on and then I remembered I knew some people that needed a nanny. So I said, “I know some people that needs a nanny, but actually, I don’t know you well enough to recommend you, so I guess I want to know more about you”. I think she kind of laughed and said, “My name is Stacy, I’m from Atlanta and I’ve been a nanny for the past few years” and she went on to tell me about all her experience. When she was done telling me about all the nanny stuff she says, “Oh and I’m a Christian”. In my mind, when I heard Atlanta and Christian I just knew I was supposed to ask her if she had been to IHOP Atlanta. So I say, “Hold up, Have you been to IHOP Atlanta?” She says, “Yes, I was just there the other day! I love that place! There is so much love there, you just feel the revelation of His love for you there”. I started to cry, I just couldn’t hold it back. I said, “You don’t understand, I have been praying about going to IHOP Atlanta for the past 2 or 3 months now and I just know that I’m supposed to go now”. And she was like, “Aww, I just wanna like give you a hug”. Needless to say I was very touched and we talked a little bit more about why I wanted to go to IHOP Atlanta and she really encouraged me to go. We exchanged numbers and eventually got together a few times. I recommended her to a few people for nannying, but the important part for me was I felt like I got my confirmation that I was supposed to go to IHOP Atlanta and do this internship.