when it’s time to be brave & pray: for us & our brokenhearted land

Piece by piece, you can feel something crumbling.

You can stand at the window on this fragile, untried day that comes around only once in four spins around the sun, stand there at the strange edge of February, and you can watch the dissolving of winter all across the fields…

And you can feel this melting away and crumbling of things in unexpected ways.

Crumbling and disintegrating of things that needed to go.

And yet too — this breaking into pieces of things that leave you feeling… this odd sense of uncertainty — a precariousness.

A sense like, for all of us, that there are things that are a bit — teetering on an edge.

And there’s brave standing at windows everywhere.

Who are putting one foot in front of the other, who are swallowing down the coffee and are done with struggling in their own strength and are starved for some supernatural help to take some supernatural steps. You can’t do God’s Work without God’s Power.

There are people who know that you can’t slay your fears without a Prayer Sword of Courage.

Prayers make us Slayers.

Nothing will change unless we change something.

There are people ready to pray their way through Lent for their people, their country, their whole world.

“IF… My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

The snow’s thawing away all the way down by the woods — a letting go.

Until there is Repentance — there will be no Difference, there will be no Deliverance, there will be no Resurgence.

Nothing will change unless we change something.

There’s a dripping, a melting of winter from the spruce trees towering to the west.

Only fools face the giants facing us with empty-hands.

The courageous can face their looming giants because they’ve prayed for the help of a God who is far more dangerous anything looming.

And what looks impossible?  What looks like it’s crumbling a bit all around us, what looks too uncertain for words?

What looks impossible changes — because when we pray to a God who is ABLE, He changes us into the ImpossABLES.

They say that, even though the woods look grey and dead and lifeless — that the sap is starting to run in the maple trees now?

We believe that faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see —

and we have assurance that God will make us strong and courageous to “lay down every dead thing we are still holding on to, to dismount from our dead horses,” (Christine Caine) — to stop holding to the past so we can step into what He is holding out to us.

We may not be fearless but we will be strong and courageous and faithful because our faith in Him is greater than the fears in us.

 

The wind melting the snow out around the edges of the barn — that wind carries something that smells like… smells like courage of good things still oming.

We will lay down our comfort zones because they are death traps, and we will be strong and courageous because He literally save us, and that makes us safe and the safest place we could ever be is in His  hand —  so we are now called to go live dangerous lives. 

It doesn’t matter what the headlines say at the strange edge of February — or what feels like it’s crumbling:

We will lay down our safe, comfortable homogeneous ghettos, and will be strong and courageous in Him to warrior for a diversity, for racial harmony, for Kingdom community, because our GOD is not American, but our God is African and Jamaican and Dominican and about Global Kingdom of God.

We will be strong and courageous because today there will be eyes on us, and they will need to see Christ in us and that we have answered Your calling for us because we have hung up on the lies from the pit of hell.  

We will be brave enough to hunger for lives of hidden service in the battle, not for public medals out of the battle. And daily pray for character greater than our calling and for a humility greater than our work. 

We will be the strong and courageous who get down on our faces every morning and repent of our fears and our idols and our sins and our messes because there will be no regeneration in this generation until there is a repentance on our faces because we cannot win any battle with rebel hearts, so may a movement of repentance move us so He hears from heaven and heals our land.

We will be strong and courageous to do the new thing, because He is not the God of I was  — but He is the God I am and He is doing a new thing and that thing is unfolding right now in us.

We will be the strong and courageous in a “faith that doesn’t erase insecurity, doubt, suffering or fear, but literally, daily, overcomes them.” (Jen Hatmaker)

Strong and courageous in a “faith that is not a formula to get us cheap stuff that only looks like the good stuff, but gives us faith that IS wild and dangerous and IS itself the real best stuff.” (Jen Hatmaker)

We could be the strong and courageous who stand on February 29th and  take the next step which may feel like a leap of faith but our best mode of transportation through anything is always a leap of faith. 

We could be the strong and courageous because “His hold on us is stronger than our hold on Him” (Jo Saxton) and delivered people go deliver people.

The hopeful stare up the steps. The faithful step up the stairs.

We will never see the miracles of God in us or in this world until we take the next step up the mountain. Even the smallest of faith in a great God is the greatest equalizer, the greatest eraser, and the greatest definer.

Faith fasts from stress and feasts on Grace. Simply: Faith refuses to stress.

Nobody knows how hard we’re all trying to be brave to show up when it’d be easier to give up, to go do hard & holy things when it’d be easier to go do happy things, to not quit when we don’t know how to keep going on.

But there’s this warm breath of  courage into our exhausted places  “Just Call to Me. I guarantee I will answer you. I will make you strong & brave and courageous.” Jeremiah 33:3 MSG,  Joshua 1

You can stand there at the window and feel it —  there’s bravery coming in the wind, all across these fields, all across our lands. And?

Our bravery wins a thousand battles we can’t see because our bravery strengthens a thousand others to win their battles too. 

We will be the strong and courageous and not pray for the hard to go away but we will pray for a Brave Faith Bigger than the hard to come.

We will be the strong and courageous who do that one next step  that seems impossible — because that’s who we are: The ImpossABLES . 

We will be strong and courageous and brave —-

because there are angels are closer than we know.

There’s a mist rising down by the woods from the last pieces of snow.. ..

 

 

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