Like An Apple Tree…

I’m really not one for sharing stuff from my journal (and this will probably be the one and only time I do) but after reading an old entry today I felt like I was supposed to post it. I was looking at Song of Solomon 2:3 today where it says, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my beloved among the sons.” I grabbed my journal from Fire in the Night because I remembered that I had a cool journaling experience with this verse. I don’t really journal the word that often but re-reading this definitely stirred me to start doing it again because it was just good times with Jesus for sure and I strongly encourage all y’all to try it out

9/15/09 – You are the only source of food and life, nourishment, the only one with food to offer me. I’ve been looking to trees for food, to trees that produce no fruit for me to eat. Like feeding on branches and leaves of other lovers. But my Beloved, my Beloved, He is like an apple tree, the only one with food for me and I can always access the fruit of His love. Apples are accessible to people, they’re not too high to reach, they are the perfect placement for someone to easily grab hold of. Some are even on the ground! (Indebted the Dia Meyer who shared that revelation in our Song of Solomon class ) You pour Yourself out time and time again. I’ve been looking around the whole forest for someone to feed me and have given myself to what I thought to be food from others, but You are the only apple tree among the trees of the woods. I come in desperation, with thorns in my mouth, hurt from feeding off of others. You remove them and feed me with Yourself, You satisfy me with Yourself. Searching frantically through the woods for food, desperation makes the find all the more to rejoice over and appreciate. I imagine myself running through the woods looking for something to eat, frantic, starving, desperate. Trying to see if any tree will taste good, a vain attempt for satisfaction. I go deeper within the woods knowing that there’s gotta be something that will feed me. I’m starving! It gets darker as I travel deep within the woods as all the trees block the sunlight from shining through. I’m about ready to give up and pass out, exhausted. I sit down and as I turn to one side I see light! There’s an open place there! I could at least use some sunlight instead of this cold darkness of the forest around me. So I follow the light, letting it lead me carefully through the maze of trees. It’s as if the light were a Person itself, extending its hand with each ray of light that shines through. Running frantically as my desperation seems to grow with every step, I end up tripping over some tree roots and get thrown a couple feet ahead of myself.

Suddenly warmth is surrounding my body. It’s almost too much to bear after only knowing darkness and cold for years. I’m so overwhelmed by the warmth that I can’t even get up. It’s as if I was instantly wrapped in a blanket. I don’t even want to move but my curiosity compels me to lift my head.  It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust and then BAM! Something falls right onto my back. I was so scared that I curled up into the fetal position. But as I did, I felt all these …things…all around me. So I open my eyes again and am in absolute awe. There are apples, bundles of apples all around me as I’m on the ground. “Wait, then this must meeeaaaaan….” I look up slowly above myself and realize that the object I just threw myself on because I was frightened is actually something glorious in every way. “This is an apple treeeeeeeeeeeeee!!” I get up and dance for joy and excitement as a child would, the purest joy I’ve ever felt. I could feel the wind laughing with me as it danced through me. Written on the trunk it says, “to My beloved.” I’ve never felt nourishment like this before. I didn’t even know what true nourishment was! Who knew!?

I pray that this blesses you in any way As you can kinda tell, I just started off writing about what it meant for the Lord to be like an apple tree and it basically turned into this vision thing or whatever you want to call it lol. It was so clear in my minds eye, I never really experienced anything like that before then.

So here’s your assignment now . Pick a verse and just start writing about what that means. For example, if you chose “The Lord is my light and my salvation” and say you wanted to focus on how the Lord is your light you might go, “Lord, You are my light, You shine, You’re cover me with Your light, You lead me, etc.” Holy Spirit loves this stuff! As you just write, all the sudden these phrases will come out of you that make you go, “WOAAAH! That’s awesome!” haha for real though, He loves to breathe on the word. You’ll find that He’ll just start to bring you other scriptures that are related to that too. It’s an awesome way to just make the word more personal to you. So grab your bible, grab a notebook, and have fun

Oh, the Word…

I love coming across verses that seem almost “too good to be true.” Ever just read a verse in the bible that makes you go, “Man! That’s actually in here?! That’s amazing!” I’ve come across that several times, usually all having to do with the way God relates to us. It just blows my mind how different He is than we grew up thinking…but that’s a whoooooooole nother post for another day. For now, this was the verse I just read that made my heart say this again. It’s like fresh water to my souuul 8)

Deuteronomy 4:7 – “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”

Thank You Lord that You are really like this. So awesome.

#2. My weak yet, sincere love, you will never despise

A couple weeks ago, the lovely Pam Spuler asked me a particular question about my time at IHOP and being in the prayer room every night. She asked, “Did you ever not want to pray?” And I said, “Of course, you have you’re nights for sure.” And then when she asked me what I did in those times I gave a reaaaally dumb answer now that I look back on it. All I said was, “I paced.” Afterwards when I was thinking about that I just realized how lame of an answer that was, I have no idea why I only said that. #1 – that wasn’t the only reason I paced for sure, and #2 – that wasn’t what I mainly did when I didn’t want to pray. It’s those moments that I discovered the value and power of our weak “yes” to the Lord and it has changed the way I interact with Him in a major way. So Pammy, this is my real answer to your question my dear

I’m not gonna lie, I struggled a lot with feeling just straight up apathetic during the first month and a half or so that I was there. It was like senioritis bled into my time with the Lord or something. I would have nights where I just didn’t feel like being in the prayer room, had no desire to read the Bible, and looked forward to talking to people in the bathroom rather than sitting before Jesus. Throw in some comparing myself to others and it’s not exactly good times. Yeah. Now this wasn’t every night, I had awesome times with Jesus throughout the whole apathy stuff but that’s just what I was mainly feeling for a lot of the time that I was in the prayer room. I may have looked like I was doing alright, and it’s not that I wasn’t, but deep down I just encountered my barrenness hardcore. So needless to say it was kinda rough at times and it was weird because that room was exactly where I wanted to be but the desire to pray and read the Word and all was just not happening for me.

There were two major moments that happened to me in relation to all this. The first was courtesy of the lovely Wendy Miller during a group burn team one night. See, the whole time I was feeling all apathetic and all, I was feeling the whole, “I want to want to read the Bible, and I want to want to pray more, etc” but it just wasn’t really happening yet. And I did the worst thing you could do when all that’s going on, compared myself to others around me. So then I just felt bad and frustrated with myself and the lies of the enemy were all over the place it was ridiculous. But one night before we were about to head into the prayer room, Wendy spoke and just broke something off of me. I don’t even specifically remember what it was exactly she was talking about but one phrase that sticks out is, “You’re not doing the prayer room wrong!”She was just talking about how it doesn’t matter what we feel like at the end of the night, if we’ve loved Jesus with our weak yes, then successful night! It counted before the Lord. And it just really hit me to forget about yesterday and even whatever I was feeling the weeks before and go into that room and sit before Him, believing that it’s not in vain. I remember going into the prayer room that night and it was just different for me. Her words did something in my spirit and it just felt like the apathy stuff was broken off.

But. Even though there was a little bit of breakthrough I was still having a bit of a hard time. Then there was this one night…

I remember I have never experienced the lies of the enemy just swarming around me like I did that night. Condemnation was all over me as I was frustrated with myself not reading the Bible, thinking I’m missing out on stuff and everyone else is going deep with the Lord but me and yada, yada, yada. And the funny thing is, I knew it was the enemy. I knew they were lies, but I just kept listening. I was straight up miserable that night. I had awesome friends fighting for me and ministering to me throughout different times in the night but when it came down to just me, it was not good my friends. I just sat there and let the enemy slime me with lies. I would cry to the Lord, telling Him that I want to have a greater love for His word and the place of prayer but instead of waiting to hear His response to my cry, I just listened to the lies of the enemy. I was longing for the Lord but just had junk hovering all around me. By the last set, the lovely Hellen Lee was singing a song that I think is by Jason Upton, it’s called Freedom Reigns. I was sitting in my chair, annoyed at myself as ever, and she starts to sing the chorus “Freedom reigns in this place, showers of mercy and grace, falling on every face, there is freedom…” And it was like something in me or around me or whatever just went, “Freedom…that’s stupid, I don’t feel freedom, I don’t have freedom, I’m not singing this.” It was just gross and not of the Lord. And by the mercy of the Lord I just like, came to my senses and said to myself, “Ya know what? This is ridiculous, that’s not God and I’m gonna sit hear and sing this song and mean it because this is the truth right now.” So I sat in that grey chair, raised my hands and started singing. And then the tears came. As I just sang the song the Lord started to wash me in His love and affirmation over me. I looooove Luke Wood’s song where he says, “Just one word from you, could shatter a thousand lies.” I literally experienced that! As soon as He started to speak to me, all that junk was gone in an instant. It was amazing. And this is where it goes back to the whole seeing the value of our weak yes.

During this whole time, the Lord kept asking me, “Brittany, do you love Me?” He just kept saying it over and over. I’d suddenly found myself in the position of good ‘ol Peter. I just kept crying and finally said something like, “Lord, you know that I love you. I do love You. You know that. I love You so much.” Just like with Peter, the Lord wasn’t looking to get an answer for Himself when He asked me that question. He was completely confident in my love for Him. He didn’t need to know that I loved Him, He wanted me to know that I loved Him. He wanted me to see that my love was still genuine and true. He was reassuring me that the reach in my heart to love Him more in the midst of barrenness was enough for Him, that it counted before Him. He just kept asking me that and each time I said, “You know that I love You” something in my was changing and it was restoring my heart.

It was that moment that really started to change the way I viewed things whenever I didn’t feel like doing something or didn’t feel His presence one bit. He’s just been showing me the glory of those moments when we don’t feel like doing something and yet our heart still reaches. Something so beautiful goes on in our spirit when we don’t feel like doing something and yet we just say, “I love you Jesus.” I have this little theory that it’s actually those moments, those dry times, when we barely have the strength or desire to do anything and yet we still set Him before us, that the most goes on in our hearts. Because think about it, you’re not feeling Him, you can’t see Him, and we can’t hear Him audible all the time, in fact that’s really rare in our walk with God. And yet you still say, “I love You.” Do you have any idea what a statement that is to Heaven? How much that moves the heart of God? I can just see the angels peering down and going, “I don’t get it!! She doesn’t see Him, feel Him, and is crying out to love Him more! What is this mystery?!” I think the Lord takes those weak steps towards Him and runs like crazy 10 x’s closer. That just who He is.

I remember by the end of the track, whenever I didn’t feel like reading the Word or something or praying or whatever, I just did it anyway because I knew it was still doing something in me. I kept saying to myself, “This is not in vain. It truly is unto something. As I draw near to You, whether I feel you’re nearness or not, you are drawing near to me and I really am being transformed from glory to glory.” So now if I find myself feeling something like that, I have this like, gladness in my heart to be able to say, “Jesus I still love You.” I know that something is going on in my heart that is glorious. I almost wish I could see some behind the scenes footage of my spirit in those times. I think we’re gonna be so surprised when the Lord revisits those moments with us and we see what was really going on and all that He was doing with our weak little “yes” to Him.

[Just a sidenote: When I'm saying that I just did stuff anyway even if I didn't want to or didn't feel anything, what I'm noooot saying is that I did it because I felt like I had to gain the Lord's favor. I didn't just do it anyway because I felt like He wouldn't be pleased if I don't do what I set apart in my schedule to do for this next hour. If you feel like you're just doing stuff because you feel like if you don't read your bible right now the Lord won't be pleased with you then you need to close your bible, open your hands and receive His love freely . What hit me is that I already had His love and all that we do must be inspired from that truth. We don't do things with or for the Lord to try and gain His affections, we do it because we already have them . Just wanted to make that clear. ]

Learning this has brought so much freedom to my heart when I sit before the Lord now. It’s like I’m learning to realize that, as MikeyB says, I love God and He loves me, therefore I’m successful. That’s it. No matter what I’m feeling, what my circumstances are or whatever, my identity and success at the end of the day comes from loving God and believing that I’m loved by Him, that my weak little heart is more than enough.

In the words of Ashley Prior: “My weak yet, sincere love, You will never despise…”