Anointing and Appointing

This weekend I went to a conference in Atlanta called the Passion Conference. It’s a pretty well-known get-together of Christian college-age students with headliners such as Francis Chan, Louis Giglio, John Piper and Christine Caine.

Now I will back up a little bit to where this message met me. The Lord has been extremely evident and faithful in my life, especially recently. In the weeks and months before Passion, the Lord had been beginning to make Himself more known to me and also reveal in me a new heart. As this was happening, I began to think about my future and where my major and my current passions would lead me. The Lord showed Himself quite clearly in my time of uncertainty (as he always does) and was starting to reveal to me a glimpse of His plans for my future. Now, one thing you have to understand about me is that I am a planner. I am a dreamer. I dream big dreams, I plan how they will come about and then I say "God, I want to do this." After all, failing to plan is planning to fail. I am a firm believer that the Lord plants dreams in our hearts for a reason, so I don't think I was going against God's plan by dreaming big, but maybe I could have given Him a little more say. Nonetheless, the Lord has been extremely gracious to me and so far in my life, our plans have aligned pretty well. Sometimes there was even an occasional surprise blessing that just proved again that the Lord was with me in all my dreaming. 

In these past couple months, though, I have started to wonder. Now that I'm really here, following my dreams and seeing the reality of it, is this really what I feel called to do for the rest of my life? For the first months of school, I never openly questioned it. Mostly because I resented the times in my life where people would say, "Oh, you want to be a singer-songwriter? Well, you'll probably change your mind a couple times before you graduate anyway." I always tried to respond as graciously as I could muster, even though in my head I was probably thinking something more along the lines of, "You don't know me, I know exactly what I want to do and how I'm going to do it and I will do it whether you believe in me or not." I liked the idea of being determined and never swaying from "the dream." It inspired me. But God has been revealing to me lately that even though I like to dream big, maybe He dreams even bigger.

Like I said, the Lord has been working in my heart these first months of college and showing me that it's not important to follow the plan, it's important to follow The Plan. Now, everyone, step back and take a breath. I am by no means saying that I am going to drop out of my dream school and become a political science major at Harvard in order to become the first woman President of the United States. I am, however, realizing that the Lord may be using my dreams in different ways, bigger ways, than even I was prepared to dream for.

In the last few months, I experienced a couple of moments where I felt the Lord was trying to reveal something about my future. What He was saying was altogether exciting, but entirely terrifying. For the most part, I just put it on the back shelf of the fridge for a bit. But, this weekend, the Lord spoke straight to me. There it was. The first words of my daily Bible reading. "Get ready, and go." Well, those words shook me pretty hard, I didn't know what to do or what that meant. Was I just supposed to get up and walk away from everything I'd ever planned? That just makes no sense. So here I am doubting anything I'd ever thought about doing with my life and wondering why God would tell me this NOW of all times. 

The next day at the conference, they introduced a woman I had never heard of who was coming up to speak. Her name was Christine Caine. I really had no idea who Christine Caine was. As it turns out, she is the pastor of Hillsong and has planted many other churches around Europe. More than that, she is a fire-cracker ready to spark a revival for Christ. As she opened her mouth to speak, it was as if she had been sitting next to me the night before when I read those words, "Get ready, and go."

She started talking about how our generation expects everything to happen in an instant. Much like photos, we expect everything to be a "snap" and "upload" sort of situation. The real process of developing a photo, though, is to go into a dark room, where the film gets cleaned, and then placed in a series of chemicals to gradually bring out an image on the negatives. 

She, then, started to talk about 1 Samuel 16 when the Lord tells Samuel to go anoint one of Jesse's sons to be King of Israel. So Samuel went to Bethlehem and invited Jesse and his sons to a sacrifice. When they arrived, Samuel was good and ready to anoint the ones before him. They all looked so good; perfect King material as far as Samuel was concerned. But again, and again, the Lord said "I have not chosen this one." Finally Samuel ran out of options, so he asked Jesse if he had any other sons. So Jesse said, "I mean, I guess there's the youngest one, but we left him to babysit the sheep." So Samuel says, "Bring him in." When the youngest brother, David, walks in, the Lord says, "Rise and anoint him; he is the one." One of the most well known Kings in the history of the Bible, who wrote many of the psalms, was not even given a name by his own father. But the Lord had His eyes on David and had bigger dreams for him than even David would dare to dream for himself.

What a great comeback story. God always liked a good underdog. So there, David was anointed and lived happily ever after and ruled over everything forever and ever and that's that. But wait, I'm forgetting something. David was 17-years-old when he was anointed. He was 37-years-old when he became King. Then, Christine Caine explained, "There is a gap between the anointing and the appointing." God didn't just anoint David and say "Okay, ready, GO! Have fun trying to rule a country by yourself!" No. During that gap of time, between the time David was anointed and the time David became King, the Lord was working on him; preparing him. David went into the "dark room" with the Lord. 

Christine continued to explain that after we are anointed, we must go into the dark room and be washed clean of the image of ourselves, and then be put through a step by step chemical process of being imprinted with the image of Christ. Sometimes the Lord gives us a glimpse and then tells us to trust him with the rest. The success of our dreams and our callings depends on our willingness to go into the dark room and be imprinted with the image of Christ before the time of the appointing. 

Wow, those words went straight into my soul. Although, I do feel a strong calling from the Lord to "Get ready, and go," I feel there is more emphasis, right now on the "Get Ready" part of that statement. I know that the Lord is preparing me for great things, and I am excited to see where He leads. It is exciting and terrifying, but the more I sit with him in the dark room, the more I trust him with my next steps. After all, He seems to be dreaming bigger than even I was daring to dream for myself. Maybe it's time to let go of the reigns a little bit and trust that the Lord has a bigger plan. So for now, I have chosen to trust Him and to continue to seek His guidance as I take each and every step. And I will walk in obedience and faith until the time of my appointing.