Additionally, my parents had both passed away one year apart, my mother in February of 2021 and my father in February of 2022. As the time approached, I knew that it would be difficult to lose them, but I was completely unprepared for this kind of grief. “Did I love them enough?” “Did I show them enough gratitude?” “Were they proud of me?” These and a multitude of other questions tormented my mind, bringing the deepest sorrows I have ever felt in my life. I stopped playing my guitar, stopped singing songs of worship, stopped reading my bible, stopped hoping for anything to ever change. Although I still prayed with the tiniest glimmer of hope, my heart was full of doubt, and I wasn’t sure He was listening anymore. Perhaps I had broken His heart the way I had broken my parents’ hearts. Grief has a weird way of distorting the truth.
Recently, as I was watering the very dehydrated, limp, and almost dead plants in our garden, I realized that spiritually, I was just like those plants. They were trying so hard to stay alive, trying to produce fruit, but barely succeeding. Without watering soon, they would surely die. It became so clear to me that I was just like those plants… my heart was almost completely dried up. Suddenly, I remembered something that I had read many years ago about watering a garden… that it is better to water plants deeply but less frequently, rather than to give them a little bit of daily watering, to encourage deep root growth and to help them become more drought resistant. Hope that I had not felt in a very long time came rushing in, along with the realization that I needed watering – a very deep watering. I knew that the Vineyard National Conference was coming up. It may have been a silly prayer, but I asked Jesus for that deep watering that I knew I needed, barely believing that He would answer.
Conferences, in general, are challenging for me, as I have a significant amount of social anxiety. I like being around people but am often too afraid to engage. The anxiety can be overwhelming at times. Over the years, with God’s help, I have learned to cope in these situations, but it’s still never very easy for me. At first, I felt the usual crowd anxiety and did my best to hide while attempting to worship. However, God has a way of finding us when we’re trying to hide our shame and our brokenness from other people and from Him.
During the opening session, the sound of over two thousand people worshipping was indescribable. It was beautiful Holy Spirit warmth moving through the crowd of people with healing power and love. Struggling to enter into worship, I offered a simple prayer asking Jesus for help for our family. It was too big for me to carry alone anymore. The weight of it was killing me and I hung my head low in shame, asking God for His forgiveness. Almost immediately after that prayer, they sang the song “I Speak Jesus,” with these very powerful words in the chorus:
Cause Your name is power
Your name is healing
Your name is life
Break every stronghold
Shine through the shadows
Burn like the fire
Shout Jesus from the mountains
Jesus in the streets
Jesus in the darkness over every enemy
Jesus for my family
I speak the holy name
Jesus
Though the crowd was enormous, in that moment, I was the only person in the room. He was speaking directly to my heart in a highly customized individual encounter. He took time to remind me that He loves and cherishes me in ways that I have never known, and that He not only hears me, but that my prayers to Him bring joy to His heart. He reminded me that He will take care of all the people I worry about and grieve over and that it is okay to let Him carry all of these burdens I have held. It’s too difficult to put into words, but in that moment, I knew that a great deal of my sorrow and grief was due to fear and trying to be in control of things that were not mine to control. It was not my job to try and make things happen and I could trust God to do things in His time, not my time. Jesus broke through the deepest hurts that I had experienced in my life… trauma, disappointment, heartbreak, abandonment, betrayal, loss. He also broke through the deep shame I felt for so many of my bad decisions and the many ways I had disappointed Him and the people I loved.
While it doesn’t take a conference to have a Holy Spirit encounter with Jesus, it does help to be in intimate relationship with the people of God, in worship, prayer, and friendship. We try so hard to put a good face forward, but when we are in intimate fellowship, we know when one of our own is struggling. We learn to recognize the signs of a person hiding their struggles and putting their good face forward. We can let our hair down and be authentic with our Jesus-friends, boldly engaging in prayer for one another without forcing anything to happen. We can share our struggles without fear of being judged or criticized. Jesus will take care of the sin in another’s heart for judging what they are not called to judge. It’s okay to throw caution to the wind when it comes to confessing our sin, our shame, and our struggles within our circle of close friends. It’s okay to actually BE the church! We are not only called to pray for one another, but to confess our own weaknesses to one another so they may pray for us to be whole and healed. Authenticity works both ways.
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. James 5:16 The Message
We are called to water one another deeply and to allow others to water us deeply. We are meant to share one another’s burdens. We are meant to “disrobe” our protective exterior in the presence of God. He does the rest. We can trust Him with our hearts. We can trust His imperfect people with our confessions. We can trust Him with their hearts, too.
Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8 NLT
“If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again. Isaiah 58:9-12 MSG
May there be restoration where needed, trust where broken, hope where sorrow and darkness have taken residence, Holy Spirit life where long term shame has destroyed. May you be deeply watered.
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