Yes!
Summer. 2010. I am sitting in my back garden, watching my plants grow. Spendinga lot of time there doing a lot of nothing, burned out from years of breaking up hardground in prayer ministry and years of personal hardship on the home front. So here Iam. Resting. Watching and waiting. Listening to what God has to say. Getting a littlecranky, because I had been listening for four months, and He hadn’t seemed to be in themood to talk.Finally, I feel His word touch my heart.“I want you to spend the next season investing in the next generation of prayer leaders.”“The young ones, Lord? How on earth is that going to happen? I’m not cool enough!”I groused. “If I plan a prayer meeting, fourty year old ladies come – at least that’s whathas happened for the last 10 years! We’ve been trying to connect to young adults, butthey’re not interested!” Like Sara of old, I laugh at God’s outrageous plans.I say yes anyway. His directions don’t make any sense to me, but what else am I going tosay? He is, after all, God.Yes. It’s amazing what big things get released by such a little word.
Fall. 2010. I am standing on the deck of a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Wind whippingmy hair about. Sun warming my skin. The captain of our ship stands at the prow – netin hand. “These are the kinds of nets that the disciples would have used, back in the day.Though they wouldn’t have caught any fish with them at this depth – they were only usedfor shallow water fishing”. He flings the net – it glints on the water, and gets pulled backin, fishless.The nets were for shallow water fishing? Waitaminit! On the day that the disciplesweren’t catching anything, Jesus told them to go out to the deep and cast their nets!The deep water, where they normally wouldn’t catch anything. All of a sudden Iunderstood Luke 5 completely differently. God wasn’t telling them to simply try again– He was telling them to try something completely different. Something that they knewfrom experience wouldn’t work! I can just imagine the guys in the boat. Weary andwaterlogged. Discouraged and disgruntled. “He wants us to what?” They look at oneanother, shrug, and point the prow away from shore. They say yes. There is that littleword again. The spiritual transaction that sets in motion events larger than they couldever ask or imagine.Spring. 2011. Somehow I am neck deep in young adults. I don’t know how it happened,but all of a sudden they’re calling me, and texting me, and poking me on Facebook. I’mlogging many hours at the Mulberry Café (and drinking way too much cappuccino),sitting across from young men and women as they share their heart for the Hamilton andtheir longing for a deeper, more vital prayer life. I buy myself a big chunky thumb ring– just to be a little cooler. I’m having more fun in ministry than I have ever had in mylife – the air is electric with excitement and pregnant with Divine purpose. God, whohad been silent for so long, is ordering my steps, speaking new instructions to my heartalmost every day. Sometimes unlikely things. Outrageous things. Things that I can’timagine how they could ever work. But you know what I do?I say yes.