faithful friday: do not awaken love...

See the above photo? I want that. There, I said it. I want to be cherished, loved, adored, etc., etc. I am almost done reading the book, Remember Me?, when inspiration struck and I'm now know what I'm writing. To give a brief synopsis: This young woman, Lexi Smart, remembers absolutely nothing about her life for the past three years when she is involved in a car accident. She wakes up from a coma thinking it's 2004. In reality, it's 2007. So throughout the book, she learns all about her life for the past three years and it's a pretty charmed life: she's got the amazing pad [house], she's got the husband, she's got the dream job...only she doesn't remember ANY of it. Then, once she thinks she's ready to settle in for the long haul, she runs into this person who makes her wonder just how charmed her life really is.


I would love to be completely swept off my feet by my very own Prince Charming. I LOVE weddings. I LOVE celebrity weddings. I LOVE friends' weddings. I LOVE seeing my friends fall in love.


I, on the other hand, am single. I have never had a boyfriend, I have never been kissed, I have never been on a date. I have had crushes. Crushes on celebrities was always my go-to romantic daydreams. I always had crushes on them because I KNEW that they were unattainable. Then, one day, something happened. I began to have a crush on a friend of mine [the person SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS].


Almost immediately I rebuked those feelings away because, in the place I was in at the time, I thought that he could not possibly be what I thought was happening. Only, he was. I was crushing on him hard. But I don't want to talk about that.


After five or six long, hard, years of going absolutely crazy inside, something happened.  God began to take me through a process of getting over him. And I did. It helped too that at the very beginning, I had asked God that, if he wasn't the one for me, to hold my heart in His hands so it wouldn't break into a million pieces. And God was true to my plea. I got over him. YAY!


This year, 2012, has been tough lately in this department for me. All my friends seem to be finding their Prince/Princess Charmings right now. And I began to feel like God had forgotten about me when it came to love. It got so bad that I was seriously thinking of bowing out of my friends' wedding last month. All that changed when a woman, Bonnie, in my church talked to me after church intercession a few days before the wedding and she had asked if I was wanting to fall in love. I told her that yes, I was wanting to fall in love and she started to speak into my life about him, how he was going to complement me in  my ministry and that he may not be in our city, maybe Toronto, or wherever, but God was working on him. That made my entire day and I would've told her what I was going through, but because of what I've been feeling, I didn't trust myself to talk. That, even though we were taught NOT to prophesy mates over people in our church's prophetic class, was the confirmation I was looking for. And needed to hear. That comforts me even now. And yes, I DID go to my friends' wedding and it was the cutest wedding that I have ever witnessed. They're forever Young [his last name and her new one].


Hearing the words flow from Bonnie's mouth has held me steadfast in my relationship with God. Now I am so happy and comfortable being single for however long God wants me to be. I'm now just beginning to understand the privilege of setting my singleness aside for Him, to learn how to be a lover of Jesus so that I can be the perfect lover to my husband. I'm just now realizing the awesomeness of being single and getting to spend all my time with the greatest Lover. I'm just realizing now the privilege of being taught on how to be the perfect wife so that I can be the perfect wife to my husband, whomever he may be.


I expect that some days will be hard, especially with the enemy skulking around just waiting for a chance to ruin my day, but I don't care. Whenever I want to be romanced, God has me read Song of Solomon 4: 1-15. Yeah, it may sound weird, the words, but hearing it from the Lover's lips? It's beautifully intense and I just swoon whenever I read it.


I am finally at the place where I just don't care whether I have someone or not. Okay, so maybe that's not exactly true. BUT...I AM in the place where I really don't care that I'm the single woman out in my life. I really don't. Because...for right now, I'm happy and content to find out who I am and what my thing is in life that God wants me to be. And, yes, I am most definitely happy to be single for the moment so that I can spend this time falling more and more in love with the Father.

faithful friday: je m'appelle harry

I'm going to screw with all you people because I know that earlier, or maybe not, that I have decried Harry Potter* in the past. If I haven't, well, I think HP is just a cheap way of satan getting his foothold into the next generation therefore somehow ruining God's plan for them [spoiler alert: it won't work]. After all, Harry does go to a school called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But I digress. No, seriously. Don't be fooled by Daniel Radcliffe's pretty face. HP deals with some pretty intense stuff.


Why am I going to screw with you in regards to the fearless hero of the book/movie series? Because Daddy God screwed with me when He spoke to me in my bed while I was in Toronto for a conference [more on that later]. He actually had the nerve to tell me, "You're Harry." What?! What are You saying?!


I suppose I should start at the beginning for those who have no clue what Harry Potter is about...other than what I told you, I mean. 


It begins with Harry Potter living with his aunt and uncle and cousin in a cozy neighbourhood on a quaint little street in jolly old England. Sounds nice, right? It isn't. Because his aunt and uncle and cousin all treat the poor guy horrendously [they even make the dude LIVE in the cupboard under the stairs]. So the poor guys is being abused by his family and he resigns himself to the reality that he will endure the abuse forever and ever [I'm not even sure about that part; it's been a long while since I've read it].


But wait!! Harry soon gets loads of letters from Hogwarts [he doesn't know it at the time]. His family hates that he gets mail so they throw every letter away and goes on vacation with him [it's really not a vacation for Harry]. One night, though, Harry is visited by this giant by the name of Hagrid. Harry is thrown for a loop. What's even more, he is thrown for such a loop when Hagrid says...


"You're a wizard, Harry."


Track with me here. There's a point to this. You have this young boy who's been so abused by the people in his life that he has NO idea what is going on when somebody tells him that he's meant for bigger and better things. In the film, the exchange goes like this:

Yeah. He was surprised by that. So you can probably imagine my surprise when Hagrid's voice kept whispering in my mind: "You're a wizard, Harry. You're a wizard, Harry. You're a wizard, Harry. You're a wizard, Harry." On and on it went until finally I rebuked Hagrid in the name of Jesus. Then Daddy God was all, "No, Mandie. LISTEN. You're a wizard, Harry."

Only instead, to my spiritual ears anyway, He was saying, "You're a wizard, Mandie." Does this mean that I'm a wizard? No. He was basically saying, "You're My daughter. You're My princess. You need to rise up and take your place in My kingdom. You need to rise up and take your place of authority over everything that I have given you. You need to rise up and take your place in the position that I have anointed you for, and to rise up and take your place to destroy the works of the enemy and all that he has stolen from you. Rise up, child. Rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up!! RISE UP AND TAKE YOUR PLACE! It's your destiny!!"

I don't know about you, but I feel like Harry before he discovered he was a wizard. He was resigned to the fact that his life, in that cupboard underneath the stairs, was as good as it would ever get. Until Harry found out that he was actually a wizard, he felt like a bag of dirt. No, not even that. He felt like a big huge nothing. After all, he was told that over and over and over by his relatives. No, it wasn't until he found out that he was a wizard that he began to see things differently. He began to think differently about who he was and who was supposed to be. 

That's kind of like us. We just go about our lives, doing whatever it is we're doing, not realizing the truth about ourselves; the truth about who we are meant to be. Until God hits us over the head with a word or a sermon or even a song, we have no idea about who we are.

We are His beloved and He is our Beloved. Nothing can, or ever will, change that. Sure, the enemy will try to steer you from that truth [much like Voldemort, the antagonist, tried to make Harry think that he was nothing special and that he, Harry, would never be able to destroy him]. But all we have to do is stand on God's Word and promises and be like, "No, you're wrong! I AM good enough and I AM God's warrior and I DO have destiny."

The Harry Potter series is all about somebody rising up and realizing who they are and going after what is theirs. Yeah, Harry does face huge battles and yeah, his enemy is completely ruthless in his plan to destroy Harry Potter. But Harry never loses sight of what he's fighting for and neither should we. 

We OWN this world. We OWN everything that we see. God has given it to US. He created Eden for US. He gave Adam ALL authority over earth and water so that WE can enjoy it...even though we never really got to enjoy it. Until now. Until 2000 years ago when He sent His Son to die on that cross. He sent His Son to die so that Jesus could pay the price for our sins and HE was the one who went into Hades. Not us. And three days later He rose again....holding the keys to unlock OUR inheritances. OUR rightful place. Just like Harry was born to be a wizard, we were born to rule and reign with Daddy God and Christ the King.

You're a wizard, __________.

*And now I want to read the series. But I won't. Because I don't trust myself.