You Have a Notification

I am not an early riser. I stay up late, do my best thinking, writing, creating at the latest part of the night, just before midnight and sometime after. It is where I feel alive and safe and free. It is the time when the weight of the world finally falls off my shoulders and I can breathe. It has been this way since I was in high school. Thirty years of flying by the seat of my pants, late night, last minute spontaneity.

Recently, my way of life was challenged. It was called immature and irresponsible. This way of life I had lived with my God and my family was called dishonoring and undisciplined and uncommitted. It shook me to the core. Not because any of it was true, because it wasn’t. In fact, it was so untrue that I found myself trying to defend my beautiful way of life to someone I barely knew. Still my heart was shaken. I asked the Lord, why? Why was I feeling the need to pull my flesh sword out again to defend my spiritual way of life? It has long been sheathed, secured on my side, for use only in emergency against the enemy.

My heart was vulnerable and my spirit was agitated. So I pressed. I pressed into the spaces we dare not go. Those deep dark crevices of our being that has so valiantly hidden the ugly things away. Those woundings that we keep going back to that we just have not quite healed from. Those areas that only God himself sees and loves us anyway.

I hate being challenged. Not because I won’t take that challenge, but because I will. I will take any challenge, even ones I should not take to prove that I am strong, I am courageous, and I am an overcomer. I will vehemently do whatever it takes to win. It is a great character trait, but not without serious weaknesses.

So I pressed in.

7am God woke me up.

“What God? I am so tired. Do I need to pray for someone, did someone message me in crisis?”

“Get up.” I hear Him say.

My mind went right to, ‘I know God did not just ask me to get up at 7am, when he knows that I am a night owl.’

“Hey,” He nudged my spirit, “Get up, get up” His voice sounded playful.

I opened my eyes and said, “I am up.”

I started to pray and asked God what He required of me.

“Get up, get out of bed, make some coffee, sit on the couch and hang out with me.”

Now, if you don’t know me, you won’t know that God and I have a very personal and friendship relationship. I joke with God, and He jokes back. I argue with God and He argues back. I question God and He answers me.

So I respond with, “It’s the crack of dawn. I hang out with you all day. Why do you want me up this early?”

“You are taking that challenge sweet girl. You are getting up early, every day at the same time to spend time with me.”

So I proceeded to argue my point. That is so religious and scheduled and ridiculous to have a set time to spend time with Him. I felt like I was getting punished and forced to spend time with God at an appointed time. Like, I don’t need an “appointed time” because I spend all my time with God, in the morning, in the shower, brushing my teeth, drinking coffee, on the drive to work, at work, at lunch on the drive home, with my family, before I fall asleep.

Of course He laughed at the notion that I was getting punished. Because I wasn’t, but it made no sense to me. I built my entire life around the notion that my God was omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. That I could reach Him, talk to Him, worship Him at anytime, anywhere and He would be present in an instant. So a set “appointed time” seems opposite of who my God is.

It was probably 7:35am by the time I rolled out of bed. I made coffee, which I never do, because that is my husband’s job, sat down and said, “Okay God, here I am.”

Of course He delivered. He shared all kinds of things with me, prophetic insight, visions, dreams, hopes, and areas that I needed to grow in. Deep intimate secret things, between He and I that shape me to be more like Him.

7am

“Get up, get up!”

Ugh… trying to find the strength and energy to get out of bed when I went to sleep at midnight.

The next day, then the next.

For two weeks I have been trying to get out of bed and get up with God. But now I don’t hear His jolly voice telling me to get up. I hear him like a Facebook notification that goes off on my phone. You know the ones that vibrate and make us jump. When we get a notification, we immediately check our phones to see who tagged us, liked or post or commented. Yet when God sends us a notification, we are not so quick to jump and check what He posted on our heart.

I love that God is not a punishing God. It’s still hard for me to get that mindset out of my bones, as this is how I was raised in the church. He is a loving, kind and merciful God. I love how He literally has my phone go off at 7am every morning with some sort of text or notification that wakes me up. It’s actually hysterical. I told God that I need sleep and that I don’t get enough. And He lovingly told me that He would multiply whatever sleep I got, so it would actually be more than if I slept in.

So…

7am, I wake up. It still takes me anywhere from 10-15 minutes to actually get out of bed. But I am up, spending an “appointed time” with God. Honestly, I am not really sure what I am supposed to do. I read, I pray, I worship, I write. I haven’t jumped on the whole read this and this passage every day for a year thing yet. And am not even sure if that is what God is requiring. I realize that even though I thought this was a discipline God wanted me to grow in, as I was challenged in that area of my life, it is not.

In reality, God is teaching me obedience on a whole other level. But I love it. I love that He trusts me with things that matter to Him. I love that He thinks I am able. Well sort of… LOL. I am, but with a slow pace. I am learning to hear the God Notifications that go off inside of me on a whole new level, in an entirely new way that I have never experienced before. I love that He is teaching me new things. It is helping me to take that next step into the dreams and visions He has placed in my heart when I was a teenager and even now.

Ask God to turn up the notifications in your heart, so when they go off, you jump and immediately see what it is God is saying.