My emotional rise and fall is determined within the almost-undetectable.
The still, small movements of my mind and heart — too fine to be caught by any filter I might employ — are where my greatest battles are fought.
And there are two areas of my life where I’ve worn the floor thin. I have memories created around both the internal and external cries of my life for breakthrough for these two things. Pages and pages of prayers, endless requests for reprieve.
If you’ve known this waiting room, you know that it must come — it has to come — with seasons. A distance runner learns endurance by the variety of their workouts. I remember times where my skin felt transparent. Did everyone I encounter see through my thin sheath into the weak heart below? And other times where if the floorboards in my house could speak they would tell the story of endless pitter-patter of my morning feet on their cold frame as I walked with the same fervency that I prayed.
This fall left me in a new season. I wanted greater faith. Old prayers, same prayers become stale prayers without the new breath and revelation of God’s Spirit. I needed new to keep praying anew.
God sent a forerunner for me. Something which my years have revealed to be a trend, at every turn of season. Often, He sends someone to go before me, to hold out a tangible picture — a carrot — of what I want. Living, breathing being who has the more-of-Him which I crave for my own lif
I sat with her over tea and got hungry. I saw her faith for her own not-yet and asked her how she got there. She didn’t tell me to pray for faith, she told me to look at Him. And adore.
Adoration unlocks the Beauty that can change a person. Adoration gives wings to what years of sermons, commentaries and exegesis speak to. It’s where the mind is won. When His word comes off the page and into my heart and becomes His writing on me, all over me, I begin to believe.
He is who He says He is. And looking at that Man can change a person, even the very worst parts of them. Especially the very worst parts of them.
The enemy has spent a lifetime — my lifetime — seeking to dissuade me from looking at the face of God. Because if I look up, everything changes. If I take my eyes off me, my sin, my failings, my shortfalls, and put them on the Man that says He can fill me with joy and peace — note: fill — hope implodes. And overflows.
It spills over into my early morning run, and my breakfast-making and shoe-tying and sheet-folding. He turns the moments where my hand is wrapped around her hand, teaching her how to write her letters, into holy. I can feel Him there. Even there, in the mundane. Even the “nothing” can be won.
When I look at me, I’m afraid to feel because feelings lead me astray. When I look at Him, I am introduced to a new palate and I can’t help but feel. He made me to feel His feelings and adoration lets me walk around in the mind of God, as I speak God’s words back to God.
If His win is received in the small things, the passing thoughts between dinner table and kitchen stove given over to adoration, I exchange the defeat I carry as the banner over my life for victory.
He can change me. If I just look at Him, for long enough — for my hundred short-enoughs during the day — and respond with adoration, my heart chemistry changes.
I’m seeing it, I’m living it, which is why I can’t help but write about it.
And those two things for which I’ve been praying? Adoring that Man has given me new endurance to pray hope. Against all seeming odds.
So I can’t afford to stop. Adoring. I just keep practicing adoration.
In a few weeks this exhale will have a new venue, with a special corner designated for this kind of practicing.
Would love for you to consider joining me. If you are a left-brain type who likes workbooks, this book is a great place to start. If you’d rather freestyle, the Psalms are where I spend my middle-of-the-day moments.
