Jesus, Can I tell you how I feel?

"Jesus, Jesus,

Can I tell you how I feel?

You have given me Your Spirit.

I love you so."

These are the lyrics to a very simple song that I learned this weekend at my Emmaus Walk.  Those lyrics now give me chills every time I sing them.

Guess what scripture was in my devotion this morning?

Psalm 27:8

My heart has heard you say , “Come and talk with me.”

And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”

The purpose of this post is not really about my Emmaus experience. I’m honestly still processing it as I haven’t even been back a full day. I will say that the secrets and mysteries make sense. I guess you could say I drank the kool-aid. I was insanely annoyed with almost everyone in the Emmaus community before I left for my walk. It all makes sense now. It was a magical experience for me. I experienced God’s love like I have never experienced in my life. And what I felt was just a tiny portion of His love and quite frankly that is overwhelming. Like I’m still kind of freaked out about how much He loves me. I have a hard time accepting love and He revealed that to me this afternoon as I was thinking about a certain part of my walk. 

But the cool thing about this weekend….I was able to tell Jesus how I have been feeling.

Friends, I’m burned out. That’s how I’m feeling. Burned out, overcommitted, and not enjoying serving Him because I have my hands in too many baskets. I started looking through some of my older blog posts, starting about 4 years ago. I was eager to find out where He wanted me to serve and praying for new opportunities. I got so caught up in how good to felt to serve, that I didn’t question any new service opportunities.  Before I even realized what happened, I was hanging at the end of the rope and not sure what to do. I have so much going on that I barely have time for my family and close friends (who fit in the family category for me) or my own personal quiet time. That is not okay.

Here’s the thing. I love Jesus. I absolutely do. He is freaking awesome. He gives me hope. He gives me courage. He carries me. I love Him so much that I don’t want to let Him down. He’s done so much for me that I can’t ever do enough to repay Him. But you know what?  I don’t have to repay him. I can’t repay Him. I just have to accept His love and grace. I don’t have to serve Him to repay Him. I serve Him because I love others and I want them to see just a tiny glimpse of His love.  But I don’t have to do everything. I’m not called to do everything. So, I’m going to chill out a bit and start praying about the new opportunities that come along my path. It may not be my time.  One thing was loud and clear to me over the weekend. I need to free up more time so that I can spend more time in His word and then write about it.  I also need to be careful and evaluate if I am serving to please a person because I simply cannot say no, or if I am serving because God wants me to do so. I’m a people pleaser. I always have been. I gave that to Him this weekend. I’m excited to see how making these changes will impact my walk with Him.

I continued reading in Psalm 27 and I came upon one of my favorite verses.

Psalm 27:14

Wait patiently for the Lord.

Be brave and courageous.

Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Waiting patiently for Him is difficult. Really difficult. It actually can really suck. I pretty much hate waiting. The beauty of it is that He will give us patience. There are many things I’m waiting to understand right now.

Lamentations 3:24-26

I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him!

The Lord is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him.

So it good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.

Keep waiting and searching for Him. Be brave while you wait. He does not give us a spirit of fear. Keep telling Him how you feel. He will reveal Himself to you in some pretty incredible ways.

Peace out, homies. Let me know if I can pray for you. It would be an honor.