Repost of September 11,2007

Today I awoke with a hunger knawing at my soul, clutching at my heart strings. It was familiar and I dug back through my blog to remember the wisdom that was given to me some time ago. The remembering was soothing, and I decided to simply repost:

“Let me ask you a question that might be offensive to you, but don’t be offended”
“ok”
“How old are you?”
“21″
“Do what you are doing until you are 25. That’s the only answer I can give you”

And I have to admit that I don’t like that answer much. Clearly I’m asking the questions because I like to feel things, I prefer to pray when something is pushing on my heart like a tender bruise and I can’t escape the pain over it; abortion, human trafficking, lost souls, abused children, sickness and pain, the persecution of the saints, the immorality of those totally given to darkness…. It’s much harder to remember that millions of children are being slaughtered daily and my weak prayers move the heart of God when I’m not broken and weeping. Not impossible to pray, just harder. It’s much harder to pray when there is no burden, much harder to remember at all that something is desperately wrong and that the world is in need of a Savior, this nation in need of a Judge, and desperately in need of His mercy. It’s much harder to remember that life is about more than my little world and the situations that involve me, the things that distract my heart and my mind. Much harder to remember why I fell in love with the Son of God, why I have to give myself to His love and scrutiny daily, submitting to His refining and perfecting.

It would be much easier to remember that the need, the only answer, is for lives to be given; men and women who would pour themselves out, who would lay down their hopes for a life just like everyone else, who would set aside their plans for the future without considering taking them back up again, for consecrated ones who would minister before the Lord, become His friends, and stand in the gap for a world who is bent on giving themselves to the desires of darkness and building their own kingdoms. How are we to sustain the urgency that so rarely touches our souls and causes us to cry out, to fast, to give of ourselves? How are we to actually have fiery hearts; madly in love with the God/Man Jesus, and unrelenting in our longing for many to turn and be saved, to throw themselves at the mercy of the King and find kindness and a Father, for wrong things to be made right, to groan and long until there is justice on the earth, until the Son has a bride, until darkness has been driven out with the light of His coming? How are we to actually have a single gaze, “dove’s eyes”, an undivided heart, one focus?

“Do what you are doing until you are 25. That’s the only answer I can give you. And even then you probably won’t feel it all the time, but I can guarantee that you won’t hate people and God, and that your spirit will be alive and you will have a fiery heart. That’s it.”

Oh to BE 25.