Experiment in trust & obedience

In Februrary of this year I attended IF:Gathering in Austin, TX. It was two days of seeking God and beginning to discern how he wanted me to take the land as Joshua had. It the end of weekend we made our own ebeneezer, our own reminder of how God moved...and did he move.

IF exists to gather, equip and unleash women to the local church and communities. 

 

When I received my stone, I wrote IF:Coffee on it. Somewhat like IF:Table, I had started to invite the women of my neighborhood over for coffee. My intention was for us to get to know each other better and to create space for the Lord to move. I also thought I was supposed to host an IF:Local the following year. 
 

Oh me of little faith and puny plans.

While I was on the right path, I had no idea what God was going to do next.
 

In March, it was time again for Set Apart. This year I had the privilege to host one of our Keynote Speakers. She and a team had put together a travelling conference for women. You book them and they do the rest. As I was telling a friend at my church about the travelling conference, she asked if we were going to bring it to our church. I looked into having them come, but felt led in another direction. 

Why bring someone in? There are women at our church who can teach, who have stories to share, who can lead worship. I spent time in God's presence. If he was leading me to do an event like this, I wanted to be sure I heard right. My desire was for him to lead, for him to prompt each step. I thought I would make it an experiment in obedience and trust.

Gather the women from both campuses together.

My church has two campuses, but we are "one church". This is all kinds of complicated. Not only are there two campuses, but even more cultures. The Lord was leading me to an event where we would bring women from both campuses, from the different cultures together.

I decided to step out in faith.

To test the waters, I started to explain the vision for the event to friends at church. That I was feeling led to bring all the women together, to make space for the Holy Spirit to move, to kick-off our year.

Women caught the vision.

Next thing I knew we had a team of women who wanted to serve, who wanted to help make the vision a reality. IF had made such an impact on me. It was done so well and every piece was intentional. We decided to adopt the format of IF:Gathering for our gathering.

At our first meeting we talked about what our focus was going to be at the event. It quickly came and was agreed that we would focus on our identity in Christ.

In Christ, I am quickly became our focus. We decided to focus on Jesus Sees You (Luke 13:10-17) and You Have Value (Mark 5:21-43) for each session of the event.

In keeping with IF's format, we wanted to find women to teach, lead worship and share their stories of how God has moved in their lives. Finding teachers and worship leaders was a cinch. Finding women who don't usually find themselves speaking, much less sharing about themselves, in front of a large group of women proved to be more difficult. It wasn't until days before the event (literally three days) before we had all the women placed.

As you know, Attempting to Lose Control has been an anthem for me for the last few years. In this I really desired to walk by faith, to let the Holy Spirit lead. As we got closer to the event and still didn't have our story sharing women placed, I kept thinking of a woman from the Set Apart conference. She coordinates volunteers and as we get close to the event, she always says, "Lord, this is your problem. I've done all I can do. You know where the holes are, you need to bring the women to fill them." It became my prayer.

Lord, you know where our holes are. You know who you want to have share. I put it in your hands.

To be honest, there were several times during the last few weeks that I thought I was going to throw up because of nerves. I kept clinging, kept turning back to the Lord, but still very often felt a bit nauseous. The day of the event finally came.

I was at peace.

I WAS AT PEACE!

It was almost an unsettling peace. I wasn't worried or fretting about anything, which made me feel like I should worry and fret.

Go figure.

Finally the evening came. I'm not sure if I can even yet put it into words. He showed up.

He showed up!

The Lord came. There was a beautiful hum of conversation and laughter.

Then came the holy.

I wanted to take off my shoes. 

I thought of Mary. Don't get me wrong, I know I did not just give birth to the savior, but I couldn't help but think of Mary in the stable.

Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. Luke 2:19

The Lord had just allowed her to play a part in His plan, in what He was doing. She did her part, then she sat back and watch the Lord move again.

That's what I did. I had done my part (which mostly consisted of getting out of the way) and sat back and watched the Lord move again. 

He let me play a part. He let this controlling, striving woman play a part in what he was doing. 

The more I gave up control. 

The more I gave up striving. 

The more I stepped aside.

The more the Lord stepped in.

The experiment worked.