Vineyard East Youth

How many of you have ever seen the movie ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’? It’s a great movie with Jim Carey in a more serious down to earth role. The reason I bring it up is not as a movie review for the site but because God had brought it to my attention. There are some nights when he will wake me in the middle of the night to hang out. Now this has happened for quite some time now, however, my usual response is to go to the bathroom and head right back for the covers. Well, while at a conference I was recieving some prayer and the person asked me if I would randomly wake up in the middle of the night. And I said yes. Then they asked me if I usually just go back to sleep. And I said yes.Then they told me that the next time that happened remember it’s God wanting to hang out with you. He’s waking you up.

So ever since then when I randomly wake up, I go sit out in my living room and wait on Him. Well of course like with anything else we humans do, it became routine for me. And I had the whole formula down for how it would work. Those were the time when God would show me some profound visions or share some insightful words and revelation with me. But I had my posture and my ‘knowledge’ of how that time spent would go. And over time i’d go out and sit with God and get up to go to the bathroom when nature called, then find myself using that as my end to go back to bed.

This one night recently I woke up.

I rolled around trying to go back to sleep, to no avail. So it dawned on me, God are you doing this to me? So I got up and went into my living room, too much noise distraction. My office, computer was on and too noisy. So I headed to our guest bedroom and peace an quiet. I sat down Indian style. Nothing. So I laid down on my stomach and face and told God it’d be nice to get a good vision or word for tonight. Make my time worth being awake. And then it happened. Nature was calling my name. So I told God I had to go. And his reply will forever change me. He said ‘so go’. And immedietely I was reminded of that late scene in ‘Eternal Sunshine…’ and Joels response is that he did go and Clementine responded ‘what if you stayed this time?’

What if we just stayed this time? As that image of that scene came to mind it transformed into my dialogue with Jesus. All the other times I would go, and our time was cut short. But what if this time, I looked past the distraction and stayed this time.

So I did.

Immediately my posture or position didn’t matter. How I approached God or just sat with God didn’t matter. I was with Jeus. And that was all He wanted. Just to be with me. And so I sat. I felt Him there. And I just sat and stayed this time with Him. And we chatted. I prayed for those that came to mind and He made me laugh and cry. And staying never meant so much.

So my encouragement to everyone reading is, first, if you wake up in the middle of the night, go sit somewhere and wait for Him. What came to me last night was that the most important thing to Him is to spend time with us. We must make it our most important thing to spend time with Him. Second, of course there are other times to hang out with Him in just silence. That’s when He calls me since usually I’m so busy and noisy during the day. But make that time. As you draw close to Him, He will draw close to you. And that is the most important thing for the both of you.