Kneel

Hello friends! I know you were expecting part 10 of Abounding In Love, but I want to go into a totally different direction today. Don't worry though, our next verse hunt will continue on Thursday(s). That's right, Thursday with an s! I want to to reserve my Tuesday blogs this month for an experiment. Before I reveal what that experiment is, I want to share how this experiment came to be.

Last week, I was praying, praising, and reading God's word out loud on the floor of my apartment, nothing new there, but just before opening the Holy book, I was kneeling down with my forehead touching the dark wooden floor, a rare thing for me to do. Somewhere during my praising, reading, singing, I heard {at the time thought I read}, the words "He who kneels before the Lord is blessed."

I was reading out of Psalms because my Bible was already flipped open to it. I remember it clearly, it was chapter 146 all the way to 150, chapters that are, pretty much, all about praising God. I looked for them the next day, so I could write down such words that spoke straight to my spirit, but nowhere in my NIV did I find those exact words, the words I know I read, or maybe heard, clearly. The closest thing I found in those chapters was this:

The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down. (Psalm 146:8)

That means I must of heard, and not read, them. Later, I lay down and talk to the Lord before bed, but those words could not get out of my mind...

He who kneels before the Lord is blessed...

As, I prayed, I felt Jesus inviting me to drop burdens down at His feet. As I did, I imagined those burdens to be marbles, poured from a tweed draw-string bag and scattering across an old wooden floor, rolling under furniture and into the cracks of the aged wood. If I chose to pick up these burdens, as I often due after plunking them down before Him, it would be a hard task.

I laid down more burdens, imagining them now to be liquid poured from glass mason jars. These would be even harder to pick back up. I kept hearing it...

He who kneels before the Lord is blessed....

Eventually all the jars and drawstring bags in my mind and heart were empty, so I thought, but no, there was one burden I kept hidden from the Lord all of my life. It was this:

My whole life, since adolescence, I had this fear, that many have probably had, the fear of not amounting to anything. But, instead of keeping this fear at arms reach in my mind, I embraced it. I thought very little of myself often - definitely a work of the enemy. At times, I even I thought it to be humility. I heard the wordless groans:

"That is NOT humility, that is earthly mentality."

Looking back, it's easy to say that this was obvious, but this fear, this burden, was so buried in me that I had no idea. I guess you could say I was blind to it because I never brought it out in the light to look at it.

Over the last two years, my confidence has been growing because my faith was growing, but I still refused to remove this thorn in my side because I didn't acknowledge that it was there at all. And that thorn was a nice handle for the enemy to hold onto.

Guys, this is exactly what the enemy does, he tries to make you feel small so that you feel like you can't do big things for God. The enemy will try to take away your voice so you feel like you can't share the Gospel.

As I dump out this metaphorical, glass jar of liquid fear at Jesus' feet, I heard it yet again...

He who kneels before the Lord is blessed....

Because I chose to kneel before the Lord, He blessed me. Which got me thinking, what if I were to take the time to kneel before the Lord every. single. day.? What if I were to, not only kneel before Him everyday, but document how the Lord blesses me through it?

Which brings us back to our experiment. I feel like we need a name for this, a hashtag maybe. How about just #kneel? Short, sweet and to the point! And I hope you guys will join me in this challenge. I hope you, too, want to develop this habit, because when things get hard, I can't imagine anything better than kneeling before Him.