Treasure Through the Cracks

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 4:7: "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." This scripture has been a theme in my life, and it describes me perfectly: a cracked, leaking vessel, imperfect and warped, soggy, unfinished. But God. 

But God!

"...to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from [me]." I thank God for my imperfections so that He can be glorified through them!

I'm not that complicated, but I thought I'd introduce myself anyway. I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina and spent many of my summers and some amazing fall weekends at Bethel Camp in eastern Kentucky, where around the classic campfire testimony time, the Lord pulled me powerfully after Him. I learned a lot of things at that camp, including my frailty and His strength, and the passion in between those two that He engendered in me.

While there, I met some counselors who had joined a program called REACH, which was an organization under what was then called Rosedale Mennonite Missions and has since been changed to Rosedale International. This program sent young people into the mission field for a year. It began with a three-month intensive discipleship training time in Columbus, Ohio, and then followed up with a nine-month outreach to various parts of the world. When I was eighteen years old, instead of going the typical post-high-school-to-college route, I decided to enter REACH.

During those three months of training in Columbus, a respected prophet in the church came to the center to teach. While there, he "saw" the gift of intercession and teaching in my life and prophesied over me. Throughout that year, I was affirmed in that gift. The team I was a part of encouraged and helped me explore what it meant to not only pray, but pray with conviction and fire, to stand in the gap, to pray through to answers, to intercede with the Holy Spirit as my guide.

And then (leaky vessel, remember?), I let it slide. I got too busy, too complacent, too everything. I still followed Christ, but I also didn't make the time for Him that I needed to clearly hear His voice. I got married, settled in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and had three children in six years ("The Fog Years," I've called them). For a long time, it seemed that diapers and soggy Cheerios were all there was in life, and then it was preschool awards and then that new math homework that I still have no clue about.

It has been quite a journey back. The Spirit has been tugging for a long while, and the corona virus pandemic has kicked those tugs into full-on-collar-of-the-shirt pulls, and I'm finally paying attention again. I was blessed to be asked to be a part of a pastor friend's intercession team (Hi, Mark Driskill!), and that has pushed me into dusting off the gift prophesied over me so long ago: listening, praying, listening, praying according to what I hear from the Holy Spirit. The Lord speaks to me primarily through the Scriptures, but He has also used words of encouragement from friends and prayer partners, as well as pictures and visions. The things I have been hearing from the Lord have increased exponentially over the last few months, and I've been asking the Lord what exactly He wants me to do with what He's given me.

A friend suggested a blog. So here I am.

A few months ago, the Lord led me to pray for revival for the global church, and for a great spiritual awakening, and - because I am centered in the United States - to pray specifically for the church here in America. Since I've opened myself up to this, WOW, the Lord has led me powerfully! In obedience to the leading of the Spirit, I shared a picture the Lord gave me with Pastor Mark (who, again, had asked that I be a part of his prayer team). As follows:

"As I was praying this morning, I saw the slow dawn of a new morning, a brilliant dot of light on a black horizon, and then with increasing rapidity, the light grew larger and more golden and spread across the black land, lighting up everything, so that even shadows had no place.

So I prayed for revival.

And then I saw pastors kneeling in the quiet of their offices with their hands up and their hearts open, troubled but faithful. I heard: "Truth."

So I prayed for the pastors I knew and the ones I didn't know, and for missionaries and for worldwide change."

Follow along with me on this journey of intercession, if you like. I'd love to have you! I'll be honest, sometimes the Lord shows me hard things, about myself or about things outside myself, and sometimes those things make me uncomfortable, but because God isn't interested in my comfort, but rather in my condition... I will be faithful to pray exactly what He gives me to pray. Join me! :)