The last week has been a season of spiritual awakening for me after a rather lengthy dry spell. The past week had been a series of ups and downs in my personal walk with the Lord. Sometimes I experienced His presence and felt in intimacy with Him, but at other times He felt "so far away" even though I "knew in my head" that He is always near to each of us.

This morning was what the Lord called a turning point. My personal prayer time with God was particularly powerful; God felt so real and so tangible and so close. During that prayer time, He invited me into a special season with Him--one of increased intimacy and awareness of His presence, and one of seeing more of His nearness and anointing in my life. He said that it was up to me whether or not to accept His invitation; but if I did accept it, it had to be totally on His terms and conditions. He emphasized that He would be in control, that He would be in charge of what we did and when; and I would have absolutely no say in the matter. My part was to simply submit to His will, obey whatever He asked of me, and to trust in His goodness. He said that if I accepted His invitation, He expects me to yield all control to Him--He gets to decide how long this special season will last, and what ways He will meet me each day, etc.

He also said that most of the time I would really like what He had planned, but there would be times when He would choose to address something that I did not want to deal with--and when those things happened, I would have absolutely no say (or no vote) in it, because I was agreeing in advance to give Him complete control and complete say in how our time together would be spent.

His invitation sounded really attractive to me, and I was ready to take Him up on it instantly, figuring that technically I'd already given Him control and complete say in my life, so He wasn't asking me for anything that He didn't already have.

Then He said something to me that was a bit startling. "Teresa, while it is true that you have given this Lordship to Me in the past, you have taken it back and right now I don't have unconditional lordship in your life, but I want it back. Are you willing to give it to Me? If you do, I expect you to leave it in My hands, and that means you get no say in those times when your will does not line up with Mine."

I felt rebuked and I knew the Lord was right. But at the same time, I felt so loved and accepted in Him that I did not feel any need to try to explain or to justify myself. I also did not feel any need to pull away from His presence in shame, or to try to hide from Him. Even though I did not like what He was saying, He was speaking truth to Me. He was stating it like a fact, pointing out a problem that needed to be addressed, but not showing displeasure or threatening to punish me. He was just showing me that I'd missed the mark and that I needed to change my behavior accordingly.

So I agreed with Him that I had indeed taken it back, apologized to Him for that, and then asked Him to actively be with me to help me truly give Him lordship and to leave it in His hands.

I was ready to enter instantly into this agreement with the Lord, but He told me to take the day to prayerfully ponder it. He said He would take my decision at the end of the day, and we'd start this special time together tomorrow. I already know that I am going to accept God's offer, but I am prayerfully discussing it with Him throughout the day, and He is giving me a better understanding of what it might look like to truly give Him lordship once again.

Anyhow, my early morning prayer time with God was truly amazing. When I got to church later this morning, the corporate worship time was a very powerful God-encounter time for me. I got completely lost in His presence, and I enjoyed this incredible sense of intimacy with Him. My focus was so strongly on the Lord that I was only half listening when the worship leader introduced the next song by saying something like "I hope you like to dance."

The song was about dancing before the Lord and it had a great dance tempo. Any other time, I would have loved to dance to this one. But I was so deeply consumed in the Lord's presence at that moment that I had no interest in dancing. I hadn't been this close to the Lord for a long time, and I did not want to do anything to take my focus off of Him or to pull out of this wonderful place with God.

Then God said to me, "Teresa, I would like you to get up and dance." Of course, I instantly obeyed Him...I mean, this morning He'd pointed out how I'd taken back the lordship in my life. I really wanted to change that and to do whatever He asked me. So I got up and started to dance. The Holy Spirit came on me as I moved and seemed to anoint my dance. I was keenly aware of His nearness and I began to really enjoy worshipping Him through dance. I found myself twirling and leaping in parts of the dance...moves that I had not done for quite some time. I was able to do these moves with ease and grace because the Holy Spirit was helping me, but I am pretty sure that without His help these moves would have been clumsy and awkward.

I did a series of twirls during which my left shoelace somehow became untied. I felt the tension change in my shoe and it felt like it was about to fly off of my foot as I moved. So I looked down and saw the shoelace untied and flapping on the floor as I moved. I was the only one dancing at the moment and thought it would be awkward to stop to tie my shoe in the middle of the song...but it would be equally awkward if the show came flying off of my foot. So I prayed quickly and asked the Lord what He'd like me to do. He told me to keep dancing. I choose to obey Him. At first I was conscious of the show and hoped that it wouldn't go flying off my foot and hit one of the worshippers kneeling at the front of the altar area. But then my focus went back on the Lord and I forgot about my shoe as I worshipped before Him.

The song went on for a long time. When it was over, I sat down to tie my shoe. But as I brought my left foot up to my right knee so I could tie it, I discovered that it was no longer untied! It was like the Lord sent an angel to tie my shoe as I danced before Him. That was so neat! I choose to ignore the problem to obey God, and He fixed the problem for me as I obeyed! I know it is a "small thing" to have God supernaturally tie your shoe, but the fact that He did this for me brought me to an even higher level of worship for the rest of the service.

Later on, after the service was over, the Lord spoke to me about it. He said, "See what happens when you choose to obey Me (and in this case to keep dancing when I told you to)? You will see that My hand and My anointing will move on your behalf as you obey Me and let Me be in control." He when on to explain that His tying my shoe as I danced before Him was a foretype of what would happen as I choose to yield to Him and to allow Him to be completely in control of my life.

This is true for all of us. The more we yield to Him, the more we will see His supernatural touch and anointing in our life.