Last weekend I went to Battle Cry, which is the main stadium event for Acquire the Fire each year.  There were around 35,000 screaming, hyper teenagers there!  I’ll admit, at first I felt a little leery when Rich brought up the idea of going to ATF.  I am twenty-three years old, hadn’t I outgrown these large teen-centered events?  But after a bit of prodding, I decided that it would not be such a bad idea if I went. 

I had not prepared my heart for that weekend.  In actuality, on the day that we were supposed to go, I was feeling quite down in spirit.  But once we entered the stadium, it was like all my weariness melted away and I just got goose bumps for the next ten minutes.  Why?  I don’t know!  Nothing was even happening and the events had not even begun.  For the next two days, the Lord continued to speak to me, mold me, and reveal to me all of the sins in my life.  I was quite desperate to remove them from my life because the guilt was just too overwhelming.  In the end, it felt so uplifting to just give it all to Him rather than to try and sort it out on my own.  Praising God with a clean heart is so much better than one filled with bitterness and anger.

It has been a long while since I’ve felt the presence of God the way I did that first night.  All the walls I had built around my life slowly began to chip away and I experienced true worship to God that night – something so foreign to me as of late.  Since those amazing nights, my mindset and attitude have changed tremendously.  I cannot recall a time in my four months of waking up at 7AM that I woke up with a smile on my face and worship in my heart, but I experienced that this week!  I feel more joyous to be a child of God and anxious to spend time with Him. 

I just wanted to share how God has sanctified my withered heart this past week and is slowly revealing His love for me still.  It only took a stadium of 35,000 people, passionate speakers and Hillsong United leading worship to snap me out of my rut.  Haha, I’m not high maintenance you know…