The Great Adventure, Part 5

Have you ever had one of those moments in life that was so amazingly God that you want to talk about it, but you can't because it's too sacred? I don't want to blow this prayer time out of proportion, but it's how I feel about it. I won't recount what all was prayed, but that time of prayer was a turning point in this journey.

The Holy Spirit fell in our den, hearts were poured out in prayer, and the four of us stood up from that 20 minute segment of time different people than when we began. It will ring in my spirit as one of the most profound and powerful Holy Spirit moments of my life. Our kids sat motionless on our couch for the entire 20 minutes (which is a miracle unto itself). When we were finished praying, God had begun a knitting in our souls. I'm not saying that we were instantly all bff's, or that nothing in our lives mattered anymore. But God had started a work. And all four of us were officially on the same page about it.

After the prayer time, we all awkwardly hugged - all so stunned by the huge God moment, we didn't know how to walk away from it. So we did what anybody would do. We headed to the mall food court. As we got in our car, I looked at Angela. And with a stunned look on my face, said, “What was that?” to which she replied, “ We are in trouble. LORD. HAVE. MERCY. LORD. HAVE. MERCY.”

Angela couldn't sleep that night (duh). God brought to her mind a dream she had 10 or more years ago. She went to her office to see if she could find an old journal whee she had written the dream down. She found a stash of old journals, pulled one out and opened it. Immediately she saw these words in her own handwriting: "Lord, thank you for bringing my family to Jackson."

Um, excuse me?

Turns out the very first journal she pulled out on this very day just so happens to be the journal she took notes in at the Beth Moore Living Proof Live conference held in Jackson, TN in November of 1999 (10 years to the week of our concert at this church last November). She was thanking the Lord for bringing her family to that event. Weird, huh? Yep. Coincidence? No says I.

It was time to call in the big dogs.

We needed counsel. So we called our pastor. And we called Beth. And we emailed our team of intercessors. We told them everything. None of them flinched. They all listened and committed to pray. And they committed to give us words as God directed. Immediately, 2 different intercessors sent us the same scripture...totally independent of one another. Hmmm.

January 1 until January 17 was INTENSE. And I'm not talking about camping. INTENSE. I don't have a lot of tangibles to give you, because it was a spirit work that was going on inside of both Angela and me. All of the unpacking of our lives we had done over Christmas, we continued to do. God gave us scriptures to pour into our hearts...Ephesians 1, Isaiah 33:2-6, Hebrew 11, Deut. 8, to name a few. We prayed. We talked. We read. We laughed. We cried. Finally, I had had enough. I needed a break. I had not been removed from this intensity for more than 5 minutes at a time for weeks. So I pulled my comfy chair up to the fireplace, grabbed the remote, and went searching for something fun on TV that would take my mind off of this nonsense for a while. I started looking through the tv guide channel. I saw that Walk The Line was on. Woo hoo! Good one. Let me soak up somebody else's hard life for a while. Maybe then I will get some much-needed perspective (my own self-absorption was even killing me. seriously.). So I turned the TV to Walk The Line.

Within two seconds of watching that movie, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) steps up to the microphone to sing. What does he sing, you ask?

"I'm going to Jackson."

(pause)

Seriously, God? For real? This is how you are going to play? God got a good laugh out of us that night. And I think we got one out of Him, too.

So we said it. We finally said it.