Day 9

Wow, if you need to receive some love from the Father, then I really, really encourage you to listen to the 2 AM worship with the word set through the prayer room archives!

There's nothing like Your love, there's nothing like Your love, to answer my longing, to satisfy my thirsting…

Today, I am continuing to work through the Song of Songs study guide and have been really encouraged and challenged by a few things. As many of you know, right before I left for internship, I signed a contract to work as a therapist at the Glenwood Center in Rockford beginning in January. I want to be praying over the Glenwood Center in preparation to work there and Thursdays is the day that I picked. So, this next season of my life was already on my mind today and then I went to class and we began talking about identity, life vision and measuring success…of course. God, You are so good!

Draw me after you and let us run together! (Song 1:4a)

The drawing after God speaks of pursuing intimacy with Him. This is where I ask Him to make me a wholehearted lover of Him and I receive His love and enjoyment of me. The running together "represents a life of service motivated by compassion for people. It involves obedience in action, reaching out to others, and stepping out in faith." This is also where I move toward others out of the overflow of my encounters with the LORD.

I know that this was out of balance when I was working at the Lycée. I was doing lots of running, but without enough drawing and the end result was that I felt tired and disconnected from God. I think that I had identified myself primarily as a counselor and secondarily as an intercessor. One of the things that I am asking God to do during my season at IHOP-KC is to shift my identity. I think that I am primarily called to be an intercessor, but I want to keep counseling out of the overflow of my time in the place of prayer.

In the notes today, Mike Bickle suggests the following identity and my heart really resonated:

Our primary identity (value/success) is found in who we are in our intimacy with God which consists of being loved by God and in being a lover of God. I confess, "I am loved (by God) and I am a lover (to God/others) therefore, I am successful." We find our identity or success in being desired by God and in loving Him instead of seeking our primary value in how much we accomplish or the impact we make. Our primary identity is not what we do with our hands but what we pursue with our hearts.

I liked this a lot because it's simple and completely independent of my circumstances. And, I no longer have to fear failure. As long as I let God love me and I love Him back, then I will be successful.

Later, Mike Bickle makes another comment in the notes:

There is no success in counseling to bring people to wholeness apart from the pursuit of wholeheartedness to God. It simply doesn't work. You are not made that way. You were made to cry for the kisses of His word.

I'm also offering up to God the way that I offer counseling and I'm asking Him to make adjustments. When I met with Elise, one of the partners at Glenwood, to sign my contract, she told me that one of the things that they liked about me is that I'm a Christian because that is not a population that they work with very much. They specifically want me to market myself to churches and as a Christian because this is a market that they are not reaching as a business. I was incredibly encouraged by this affirmation of who I am and this invitation for me to practice counseling as a Christian! But, I'm not sure exactly what that will look like for me because I have never been overtly Christian in my counseling. So, I'm still asking God to direct me in this area.

But, I'm feeling really great today and resting in the knowledge that God is sovereign over my future. As long as I make loving Him wholeheartedly my first priority, then I believe that He will give me the wisdom and direction to do everything else.