I was in prayer this morning and heard part of a song by Luke Wood:
I want to stand in Your counsel
And sit at Your table
And speak to You face to face as a friend…
Before I got past this first verse, I felt like crying. It was such a necessary reminder of what I’m after and what I feel I have been left alive on this earth to do. Even as I labor in prayer and as I prepare to preach (there, I said it) and with everything else I have going on from day to day, this is the heart of who I am. In all my doing and all my ministry, if I haven’t stood in His counsel, it benefits me nothing. If I haven’t met God and heard His voice and had His own fire touch my heart, not only will my witness be that much less effective, but I will become dull on the inside. I desperately don’t want that to happen. I can’t afford it.
Life is too short to not really know God. The hour is too urgent to babble away with lofty sounding ideas that have nothing of the weight of heaven upon them. As exciting and glorious as it sounds to stand in the counsel of the Lord, it is more than that — it is a matter and life and death for those called to be His messengers. It is a matter of hearts being alive and our witness being powerful, or our hearts growing cold and our words falling to the ground. He is coming back soon, and we must know His voice in that hour.
This journey is a painful one. As other lyrics in the song go, “Let my heart be torn in two until Your will is mine.”
I personally am hitting head-on the reality that in and of myself – I have nothing. I’m nowhere near where I want to be as far as hearing God and then responding rightly when I do hear. But by the grace of God, I want to continue to say yes, continue to rise up and follow, once and for all to remove that garment of fear that the enemy keeps trying to fasten back on me. No more! uh uh NO I will not cower to intimidation any longer and I will continue to cry out to hear His voice until the day I see Him face to face…
I want to stand in Your counsel
to sit at Your table
And speak to You face to face as a friend
I want to stand in Your fire wherever Your eyes fall
May You find me faithful to Your heart
Let me be found…
With a heart after You
May Your eyes find this heart loyal to You
May You be all that’s on my mind all of the time
Let my heart be torn in two until your will is mine
Dearly Beloved of my soul
a lamp and a light 