My Social Media-less Life

Happy New Year!
The Lord has prevented me from posting until now, and I’m only posting this for my own posterity and not really for anyone else’s.

As is usually the case with the turn of a calendar year, I began with some goals in mind. Achievable, but not so easy that I would have them all accomplished before the end of January.

And then I did the right thing and spent the better part of an afternoon sitting with the Lord in someone else’s house while they were out of town (it was a last-minute ask, and I love their kitty). One guess as to what the Lord said the most during that “meeting.” Hint: It has everything to do with the title of this post.

As we all know, in the moment, one is ready and willing to surrender… and then the first test comes.

For me lately, the “test” has been getting to bed at a reasonable hour and not being distracted by things like YouTube. To be fair, I haven’t been more late than usual to my morning appointments, however, I haven’t gotten up in time to do my morning devotions because I’m going to bed so late and don’t want to wake up at 6:30 after going to bed at 2:30.

And yes, this definitely applies to the particular night that I’m posting this… it’s 1:23am as I’m writing this sentence, but I was also out late and NOT on YouTube for 3 solid hours before writing this.

Sometimes when I come home late and need to “defrag” my brain, I’ll listen to music. Lately my music of choice has been the K-Love 90s channel on their app and until they made different channels on their app, I never thought I’d give them this much listening time.

If you know my age and can do math, you’ll know that I was a child in the 90s and both of my parents gave their hearts to the Lord for the first time in that decade. Therefore, I was quite actively listening to Contemporary Christian Music in the 1990s. In my opinion (humble or otherwise), it was the golden age of Christian music. Some of the songs are cheesy as all get-out… but nearly all of them are Biblically solid.

And now why I bring this up…

I was listening to K-Love 90s tonight (as I stated) and the song “I Surrender All” by Clay Crosse comes on. Great song; I’m mostly familiar with it. The Lord and I have a moment. Two songs later I moved to the K-Love Eras channel because a song I didn’t like as a child came on. A song and a half later, “I Surrender All” by Clay Crosse comes on.

~Insert eyeroll emoji here~

The Lord brought to my attention a moment I had in church with Him on Sunday where the preacher “opened the altar” for anyone to come down for prayer, but there were no prayer people. It was just a “come down and have a moment with the Lord” type of altar call.

If we backspace even five minutes earlier, we will see that I was having a WHOLE conversation with the Lord before we ever got to that moment.

First of all, I was on the front row for what felt like the first time in forever, and that affects how I will respond to messages, but the Lord told me He wanted me to go up.

“I need to go up for prayer?” I asked for clarification.
“No.” He replied simply.

So when the congregation stood up for the final moments and the “call to action” part of the message, the Lord finally clarified.

“You’re not going up FOR prayer, you’re going up TO pray.”

Literally as soon as the preacher said, “I’m opening up the altar for anyone to come forward–” I was the first one to step forward the 8 feet or so and kneel on the floor. Guess what?

Nothing happened. I just praised God and thanked Him for His mercy and grace and worshiped Him. Usually when I go up to the altar, I feel something. And I know it’s not about feeling, but it was weird that I didn’t at least catch a whiff of something.

However, one thing I did notice when I chanced a glance around me was the amount of people that came up after I did. And I knew who the “first responders” were based on how they were taking up most of the walkable real estate on the floor.

I went home that afternoon grateful to be that very first responder, but it did bug me a little bit that I left feeling… unfulfilled. I thought it was maybe because I didn’t really talk to anyone after the service and that’s super unusual, so I ended up on a FaceTime call with my bestest friend, Esther, for 5 hours, but obviously that didn’t “fix” anything.

However, it was nice to be in my friend’s “presence” for most of the day.

In conclusion…

The reason for my being out late tonight was a church-related reason, and at this event, one of the other guys there mentioned really fast, “Hey Erica, remind me to tell you something after this.”

I didn’t let it bother me, but I was secretly trying to figure out what he wanted to tell me. What he told me wasn’t what I was expecting, but as the Lord does, it was exactly what I needed.

The guy thanked me for responding to the message on Sunday. After he saw me move, he immediately felt the “release” to go up. He even mentioned that he probably would have gone had I not, but I realized while he was talking that something about my response caused him to react differently.

What is that something?
TA-DA!
Surrender.

I didn’t really want to go up, but I knew my response would affect others in the church… especially in the corporate setting.

So why do I struggle to remember that my response in my everyday life also affects the church as a whole, even if I don’t immediately see the outcome?

Well… that’s the journey we’re now on together. Welcome.