Friday, September 17, 2010

Where are the VOICES?

It's time to start this blog up again. A quick update... I moved back to Washington and I am an intern at the International House of Prayer Northwest in Federal Way. It's a 3 month program, although so far I'm not really sure if you can call it a program. There is not much structure and mainly I spend 8-10 hours a day in the Prayer Room, either praying, worshiping or studying. There is some class time which has been awesome, but mostly it's just me and God here. Lots of time to think and process, and time to just rest before the Lord.

And now for what has been on my heart...

My heart has always been heavily burdened for this generation and the hardships that the average teenager and college student have to get through as they try and "grow up." On Tuesday my heart was hit yet again with the reality of what we are up against. Gary Weins (the director of IHOPNW) was leading a discussion time and he mentioned that there are two "windows" into which we can look in and see the heart of God. The two windows were, fatherhood and marriage.

Neither of these were a surprise to me. It doesn't take much to peruse through the Bible and realize that God is all about fatherhood and marriage and that He often reveals Himself through both of those things. What struck me was hearing both of those things in the same sentence. I think something along the lines of righteous anger began to rise up within me, because when you put fatherhood and marriage side by side it is so easy to see how the enemy has attacked them, and the war is on in this generation to demolish both fatherhood and marriage.

I'm 28 but I'm a prime example of the way the enemy came in and attacked those areas in my life. I have nothing, no experience from my own life with which to compare the Lord to in the way of fatherhood and marriage. I did not see either of those modeled well, and as a matter of fact I learned to mistrust fathers and hate marriage. Now before you get all worried about me, just take note that I have come a long way and have been healed of many of those wounds. I am in the place where I would love to get married and I would love to be a mother, so naturally I would want my kids to have a fabulous and godly father.

Sadly, my heart is aching for the numerous young people out there who have had similar or even worse experiences as mine. Satan has attacked these windows into the heart of God so much that now these two windows strike fear, anger, hurt, and even terror into the hearts of so many in this generation. What's crazy is that I should never have made it to my college years before someone stood up and declared the way I have grown to know fatherhood and marriage as an ungodly thing and helped me to see them in the correct, godly way. I spent years not being able to relate to God as His beloved daughter, let alone His bride. I feared all of those things. If God was my father then that meant that he would leave me and reject me. If Jesus was supposed to be my bridegroom then that meant that I would eventually find Him to be unfaithful to my heart that already had so many deep, deep wounds.

I can't even begin to express in this blog the emotions that are welling up within my soul about this. I want justice and I want righteousness and truth brought forth in this generation! The attack is only getting worse. It's totally "normal" for a kid to grow up with an abusive or passive father, if they even have a father to begin with. And then when a kid has no father to truly guide them through life they flip on the television to watch the latest episode of Modern Family, in which a modern family is portrayed as a gay couple with an adopted kid, totally desecrating God's holy intent for marriage. These are the norms of our society and so far removed from the way God intended it to be.

But where are the VOICES? Where are the ones who are crying out that this cannot be? And where are the ones who are going to steer this generation back toward the way God intended it? To call forth the fathers and pray for the marriages? I don't hear those voices much anymore. I hear the voices of compromise and the voices of those who have very good hearts but yet no longer know how to fight. Are we ashamed? Are we afraid? Why are we not rising up? Where are we when they need us?

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