Today the Lord and I are celebrating a 1 year anniversary.
It was exactly a year ago today that I began begging...pleading for revival in my heart. Here is a peek into my journal:
1/6/08
"...and I know that means it must, MUST START WITH me connecting with You - my quiet times, my time in your Word, my walking in an awareness of your Holy Spirit. No wonder, Lord, that I am weak and sapped - I am trying to do it on my own - "religion" as my cover-up for my lack of relationship. Revive me, Lord!!!! ...."
And so it began...
Early each morning, me begging for revival. for desire. for passion. for consistency. for Christ in me.
I have failed too many times to think that I could do it out of my own effort. That works for awhile...then not.
The verse I claimed over and over and over again:
"Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Psalm 51:12
Today, on this anniversary of ours...this is my journaled prayer:
1/6/09
"Lord, I praise You for the way You restore and revive...your specialty is redemption and I thank You for your faithfulness to it! One year ago today, Lord, I begged You for revival in my heart. And You provided. Do it again, Lord (Psalm 126), do it again. I am grateful for progress, yet SO aware of my need for more. The more I grow, the more I see my own sin, selfishness, selfish ambitions, vain conceits, on-and-on-and-on...Forgive me, Lord, and restore/revive me some more! My heart is humbled and I am begging again."
And this morning:
Philippians 3:7-14: But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
And so I begin another year of begging.
