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Weighty Moments


Every breath is precious, but not all moments are created equal.  Some are just plain weightier than others.  I mean clipping my toe nails and saying I do just do not equivocate!  I think part of appreciating life is recognizing when the moment is pregnant with meaning.  Yesterday held some of those for me.

Both of my twins prayed when they were smaller to ask Jesus to come into their hearts.  One of them had an almost immediate change in behavior.  Before that she could throw a tantrum like a bull in a rodeo.  Only it wasn’t 8 seconds!  It could last for an hour! No discipline seemed to make a dent in her little temper until after that day.  Now it wasn’t a silver bullet, and she can still blow a fuse.  But boy, the tendency to go all fire cracker on us really improved, and her heart seemed to be softened.  To this day she remembers that prayer, and it has seemed real to her and she is full of faith.

The other sweet little also had some serious heart change after making the decision.  She is my big thinker, though, and as she has grown so have her many questions… and doubts.  God is not afraid of our questions.  So we talked and discussed and pointed her back to the truth.  I know you are probably wondering how deep a 7 year old’s questions could be, but she was seriously hitting on the major questions- the problem of pain, the questions of death, the existence of God.  It blew me away really. 

The week before we sent her to church camp for the first time this summer, I found myself praying that God would just give her a powerful encounter.  Words are good.  Teaching and prayer is good.  But at some point every person needs to have an Encounter.  Sometimes we don’t need the what or the why to answer our questions.  We need the Who.  And she was there.  It was hard for me to send her.  She has a serious bee allergy and moderate asthma.  It was a stretch to pack up my baby and her epipen and inhalers a week after an asthma attack and send her off to a camp in the woods.  But we felt it was the right thing.  So I bargained.  “Ok God,” I said.  “I am trusting you, and I am sending my baby down there and I need you to touch her.  I am expecting a return on this investment!”

The last night of camp it happened!  A counselor prayed for her and my little said it felt like lightening went through her head.  The Holy Spirit filled her and she began to pray and weep.  She couldn’t stop crying for almost a half hour.  In her own words, before that she thought if she died, that would just be the end of her, but after that night she believes!  So this past Saturday was their baptism!

Which leads me to the weighty moment.  I was drying my hair and getting ready to go to the church- no that’s not the weighty part- and a message that a friend of a friend sent me almost 8 years ago popped in my mind.  This lady wrote me just after Makiah was killed.  She had lost a daughter as a baby and years afterwards, when another child of hers was getting baptized, she had a dream of a little girl sitting on the side of the pool during the baptism and splashing her feet in the water.  When she prayed about it, she felt it was the Lord showing her the baby she had lost and saying that He had let her watch her sibling’s baptism.  Now I am not here to discuss theology, but this email from 8 years ago just came so clearly across my mind just before my girls’ baptisms.  And I had such a strong sense of God’s presence and the impression that perhaps Makiah would be allowed to watch her little sisters get baptized.  Perhaps.

Later after their Daddy baptized them with several other children, we sang a song that gripped me to my core. 
“The enemy can’t take what I have,
Change who I am,
I belong to you!”

 He thought he did.  Thought he could.  When he stole her body, he thought he would change us and take our life.  Our joy.  Our purpose.  Our faith.  Our children.  Their faith.  The next generation.

But he didn’t.  He hasn’t.  He won’t.  He can’t.
The words poured off my lips and a resolution filled my heart like I can barely explain.  We sang, and it became for me a declaration. 

                “You called me out of darkness
                You silence every lie
                And no other voice will define me
                I belong to you, I belong to you!”

Tears leak out, and I know this is prophetic.  A declaration of victory that makes him shudder. 
These baptisms.  A reminder that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
We were alive to sin, died and buried with Him, and now we are raised up alive to Christ.  And one day our bodies will follow.   Resurrection power is real.  This mama who was once dead inside but who is now bubbling with life is here to testify. 

Don’t close your eyes.  To the weighty moments.  They are there for the taking.  And there is a gift that is waiting that no man can or devil in hell can take away from you. Let the lies be silenced and the Truth ring out!



Listen to Iron Bell's Belong to You Here

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,"  Hebrews 12:1

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