I stepped onto the school gym floor very early this morning feeling a particular charge in the air.  A sense of urgency, really, coming from outside myself.  Like?  The Father had been waiting on me.  He wanted to talk to me.  I plugged in Chris Tomlin singing I Will Follow and reached my hand up to Him, open and eager to lay it all out there and give up my agenda.  God, what does it even mean to follow You?   Show us.  Show us where You are.  And we will go there.  I’ll tell my friends and bring them along.

My word for months, the one I kept hearing in my spirit, was “abide”.  I looked it up, the meaning, and grabbed hold tight and let it live in my head and my heart.  Here lately, though, the word, words, seem to have changed.  “Stop striving.”  So, I opened my Bible to the Psalm numbered the same as today.  “God is present in the circle of the righteous.”  It was then that I sensed He was here.  HERE.  And waiting to hear from us.  So I began praying in earnest, not for what I thought He should do?  But for Him to show us what He wanted to do.  And God?  Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, spirits eager to follow.

Later I sat in the circle of the righteous, my friends here at school, and it was good.  I found names and faces scrolling through my mind as I listened to them talking and I wrote them down.  I grabbed up my paper and went to find a quiet space to pray.  I ended up on a corner couch, sitting in the morning sun and began to pray over the name of a young lady I only know by name.  I looked up to see her coming toward me, the only person in the hallway.  I had to let her know, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the God of the Universe was thinking of her through me, a total stranger.  “Is your name _________?” I asked her.  Yes, she replied with a question mark at the end.  “You want to know something crazy?  I was just praying for you.  And I don’t even know you.”  It was the look on her face that told me I’d heard right.  A look that hardly has words for it.  Like He’d just said it to her Himself…..I’ve got you in my sights, daughter….and she’d heard Him.  “Really??  Wow.  That is wild.  Wow.”  I knew He meant to change her life.

Later, the boy came by, right through the door, not hiding behind anyone, not avoiding.  Standing full front in front of me, looking me in the eye.  “Thank you for the special gum you gave me yesterday!  She gave me a bag of special gum!” he said to the other kids in the room.  I’d just asked this morning.  Father?  If you mean to restore, will you bring him to me?  I’d let him down and he ran.  When he walked out of the store, I sat with chills running down every part of me.

“Stop striving.”