Another post with a story from the YWS; a little later than planned, but it's here all the same.
Let me begin at the beginning. A number of weeks ago in church, one of our members had stood up the front and brought a prophecy to us. I can't remember it word for word, but the general gist was that if we will kneel before God, He will bless us. I knew in my heart that God was telling me to kneel; not spiritually or metaphorically, but to literally kneel down on the floor right where I was. I play in the band at church so I was at the front where people would've seen me if I'd suddenly decided to kneel down in response to this prophecy. No-one else was kneeling and I thought I'd look a bit of a wally doing it. So I didn't. Though I knew without a doubt that God was asking me to do it, the moment passed and I instantly regretted my disobedience. You know the feeling, I'm sure? When God's asked you to do something, you don't, and then when you realise what you've done your heart sinks and you start apologising to God over and over...
Well I was busy apologising to God; telling Him I loved Him and I wished I'd just done what He asked. However, God's response was 'I'm going to give you one more chance'. When I asked Him what He meant, He explained it to me: basically, I would get a chance at some point soon to do this. I would know when it was, God would make sure of that, but I had that one more chance to kneel and surrender. God warned me that the next time it wouldn't be as easy; there would be more people and it would be a situation where I would feel even more of a wally. I guess this was only fair, so I told God that I would try to do it next time.
Around 4-6 weeks later I arrived at the Youthwork Summit in Manchester. During the worship time toward the end of the Saturday, Rend Collective played the song 'Hungry'. It's a Vineyard song I think, and the first verse and chorus go like this:
Hungry I come to you
For I know you satisfy
I am empty, but I know
Your love does not run dry
So I wait for you...
I'm falling on my knees,
Offering all of me
Jesus you're all this heart is living for.
Well, if you look carefully at the chorus, you can probably guess where this is going. God informed me that 'this is it'. I knew that my second (and last) chance had arrived. As we sung the chorus the first time I knew that when the chorus came round again I would need to show God my obedience by kneeling; in a room full of 700+ youth workers, with my friends from York stood around me... It was now or never.
Well I did it. I decided that God was worth the embarrassment, and that He wouldn't ask me to do this without good reason, so I knelt down on the floor right where I was. I felt like a wally for the amount of time it took me to get from a standing position, to a kneeling one; and then God's blessing and love hit me like a tsunami. It was a really intimate moment between me and God, so I'm not going to share all the details of what happened between me and Him in those 10 minutes. But I will say that my life has changed since that moment; it was 10 minutes full of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, blessing, healing and God's Spirit poured out onto my life. There is no way I could sum up that time with God, but I know that Jesus was right there with His arms wrapped tight around me and I know that every time I told God I was sorry, His response was 'I love you'.
So, the moral to this story? God does not ask us to obey Him because He wants to exert His power or prove to us just how powerful He is. He already knows just how powerful He is, He doesn't need to prove anything to anyone! God asks us to obey because our obedience puts us in a place of surrender and vulnerability, and when we are in that place God is able to pour out His abundant blessing and demonstrate His love for us in a more intimate way. Obedience to God is allowing yourself to take a big step toward Him; when you do that, God takes the rest of the steps towards you and the meeting that occurs is more precious than you could ever imagine.
What did I learn? It doesn't matter if what God is asking me to do makes me feel a bit like a plonker, because if I'm willing to obey the blessing that awaits me far outweighs the embarrassment I might feel to get there.
