OCEANS AND DEPTHS

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. PHILIPIANS 4:7, KJV. 

And the peace of God [that peace which reassures the heart, that peace] which transcends all understanding, [that peace which] stands guard over your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus [is yours]. PHILIPPIANS 4:7, AMP.

There is a certain type of quiet in the atmosphere of my spirit. It's an unprecedented expression of still. As sounds, voices and echos fill the air with an overwhelming pressure, all I hear is quiet and my heart response is still. He says it's peace. I have peace. He says I am calm and I must value and acclimatize to the quiet and still. He didn't say calm just because, He said that is my name and nature. So in the ocean, in the depths of the ocean where the storm finds expression He says I must not lose myself. Calm must be. In it's being, there is quiet and in quiet there are rhythms, unspoken rhythms and tunes that He sings over me. As he sings He wants us to do the lover's dance. He wants me to dance with Him from my core in the ocean storm and depths. He wants a hearty dance as the rage of the storm serve as instrumentals to the song He sings. My lover, the strangest of all yet the one who sees and knows my all like no one does in his tender fiery gaze. He wants a dance in the ocean and deep as I be “calm”.


If you're not so deep and want real life experiences say yay 😀. Lol. It's been so long and I miss writing here. I need help with this writer's block thing. How have you all been?

So speaking practically, I am in a place where the voids of unanswered questions are growing deeper and my emotions are stirring volcanically but finding very little to no expression. A new semester has started and I am scared like really scared. Why? I don't know if I can withstand the new level of stretching that is coming with it. Sometimes I feel like I'm not really learning and just breezing through school. Don't get me wrong, I really love school. In fact I see an academic career. The problem is I don't know as much as I should. In class they think I'm a scholar, whenever we have an assignment that requires presentation people come to tell me how they can't wait for me to do mine and their words are true because when it's my turn my coursemates pay more attention, there are lots of encouraging gestures in the background and so on. The problem is I really don't know anything. No I'm not underestimating my capacities, to the glory of God I am an A student but I don't have discipline lol so I never exactly meet up to my standards. I'm way too spontaneous. I take time to make plans with the help of the Holy Spirit because I believe in structure and order but when it's time for execution I'm like naah routine is boring let's go spontaneous Holy Spirit or I start out with the plan and finish spontaneously.

He dealt seriously with me on this spontaneous matter and made me realize how proud I was to think I can cover a semester's work in 30 minutes to 1 hour before the exam or in some good cases the day before. Yes it's something I have done a couple of times and passed with a good A but He clearly told me how that attitude is a bad ego game and sheer conceit. He said if you're  going to pass well you need to acknowledge the effort of the lecturers who took an entire semester to impart knowledge into you by studying and appropriating enough time to school work. The fact that you understand things by reading at first glance or simply listening is the reason why you should do extensive readings. You need to learn discipline and I'm going to teach you that. You can't go on like this. Honestly, I didn't like living that but is there really an explanation for bad habits? I knew what I was doing was wrong and I always tell Him how I need all of His help to finish well (with a first class) because I know that I know that I know that it's not my mental capacity that will earn me that but the virtues I have to learn and habits I must unlearn.

So I said yes Lord and He broke, moulded, broke again, remoulded and stretched me by helping me master punctuality to class and punctuality with deadlines. You guys remember my history of perpetual lateness? Yeah I'm better but with deadlines I'm still striving. He helped me learn and relearn consistency and commitment as I did all the courses for the semester which would mean attending classes and doing assignments and presentations for core courses and 4 electives instead of 2 even though I was just going to sit for 2 elective exams. Why go through the stress? It was His way of teaching me the essence of foundational and general knowledge in a field of study that is diverse and opening my eyes to the area I would want to specialize. He was also showing me the amount of strength I have and breaking the strongholds of poor time management, procrastination and the emotional rollercoasters that precede my unproductivity. Just imagine the amount of time and effort I put into assignments whose marks would amount to nothing? Let me also mention the tension and anxiety that comes with deadline clash or is it the fact that I mustn't make excuses even though I knew I would just sit for 2 exams out of 4 electives? He let me off on some really tough ones but not until I knew I had done everything within my capacity. That's the kind of stretching He put me through. There were many episodes of emotional rollercoasters but there was no room for pity parties that didn't make me do what I was supposed to.

When will ocean and depths, quiet and still and rhythms and dance come into the story? Please read on, I'm laying the necessary foundations😉.

Now the reason I am scared of the stretching is not because school workload will increase but because I am going through many things at the same and I'm afraid of imbalance. As much as I want to say my spiritual life needs a lot of grooming I can't deny the fact that I have grown with some much speed in the past months. My desire for daily and genuine repentance and surrender is stronger than before. I can't count the number of times I ask the Holy Spirit for the state of my heart in a day. This heart can't be corrupted and my eyes can't be lifted off Jesus. The way I love my Jesus is more delicate and my intimacy with the Holy Spirit is constantly intensifying. But the growth, the growth is requiring a lot more “Yes Lord”. Yes Lord to the unknown, Yes Lord to revelations of mysteries, Yes Lord to amplified pruning and cleansing, Yes Lord to depths, Yes Lord to the oceans of His realities, Yes Lord to His heart and desires. I won't even lie, I'm afraid of depths. The realities He has plunged me into recently requires a lot of courage and as much as I demonstrate that, underneath, there are layers of fear and paranoia. Going through seasons like this alone is hard. I want to take a break from people, from church, from home, from everything and just be.

More people are coming to see this light and I'm afraid of leading them astray because honestly I don't know what I know sometimes and other times I'm not sure I'm speaking with accuracy. When I receive messages from certain persons asking me to interpret scriptures they don't understand, my heart skips. Sometimes it's because the interpretation I knew is not what the Holy Spirit is saying and so I have to renew my knowledge of that scripture and press in to know the person's situation and how the scripture should be broken down. Other times they are scriptures I have not paid enough attention to. All these things provoke questions of inadequacies. Am I really called to teach? Can I really get to that point where I have studied to show myself approved? Will I always have to say “I'm sorry I don't want to lead you astray please give me time to pray over this and understand it”? When will I get over that guilty feeling that comes upon me when I don't give enough scriptural references after speaking to someone that needed counsel? Why do I have to sound like a motivational speaker instead of a teacher of the Word? Were my references correct? I don't want to bamboozle anyone but are the scriptures enough to ground this new knowledge? No matter how much I speak to people I still want to run and hide and I can't seem to stop breaking my sentences and stuttering. I'm not a stutterer but the aaah, ummh, ehh , what's the word? don't stop. Really, how do people make sense of the things I say?

I acknowledge the fact that I'm growing in my knowledge of the mystery of the existence of the Godhead, salvation, grace, eternity and everything related to the Christ life. I know it's okay not to know sometimes and that it's not fine staying ignorant but He's leading a lot more people my way from different platforms of service and this people have varying needs so there is a great pressure to know their knowledge deficiencies and study to lead them to Him while studying and knowing Him for myself. I feel like I never do any of them most of the time even though I devote time to study. My permanent and temporary intercessory list is ever increasing and changing. Time! These things require time. Alot of time that I won't bother giving away if I wasn't also a daughter, sister and friend. It hurts me everytime my sisters come to me for help with school work and I don't devote the attention I used to. There are times I'm not even busy but the fatigue cannot be ignored and so my free time is not really adding value to them. To think that I have to learn these things simultaneously because they would never stop for each other.

There's also the aspect of spiritual gifts that need stirring. The ones that scare me the most are the gift of prophecy and interpretation of tongues in the gathering of brethren or when He leads me to strangers (this one really gives me the chill like my tummy starts to churn seriously). I don't have a choice I have to do what He wants. This is a life of “Yes Lord”, yeah? The visions are steady and the dreams too but I still don't embrace them entirely. I feel like I never really see and the ocean amnesia doesn't help. Ocean amnesia is my term for the memory loss that comes with the flood of knowledge from experiencing new realities. It's constantly forgetting where you are in relation to where you are coming from, not remembering the details of encounters or instructions/prophecies and in the case of dreams and visions, not being able to remember the fullness of the revelation. Then there's the realm of identification of and confrontations with dark Spirits. The last vision I saw of a dark being wasn't funny. I prayed with much confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit but He knows I had melted away. It was during my quiet time and I was struggling to stay awake because I was physically tired and emotionally drained and then boom the strange vision.

This is where ocean and depths, quiet and still come to play. If you read up till this point. You're the real MVP. Honestly.

All these aspects of my life including the ones I couldn't include in this write-up are the ocean. Relating Him to the happenings in my life plunge me into depths of Him because all these things make me up and I am found in Him. In finding myself, I ultimately find Him and in finding Him I launch into the real ocean -an ocean of love and knowledge- and drown without realizing it because He is deep. The storm is the fight for my attention.  So, everytime He said and says to be calm that is still and quiet, He's asking for an unmoving posture of worship. When He says to dance He is saying that my posture of worship though unmoving must be responsive to His every move and touch. He has been teaching me to understand and most importantly settle into the peace of His presence because that is what builds the wall around me in the storm. I'm sinking deeper in His reality and there will always be distortions, displacements and replacements that will rise as storms. So, for those times when I feel like I have lost touch with myself and emotions because everyone but me is involved in theatrics He is saying I'm not inhumane and I'm not putting up a front, I'm just protecting my peace which is the key factor is navigating situations in sanity. He says I have learnt a new dimension of expressing my hypersensitivity and it's not in drama, mood swings and anger. It's pouring out my heart in peaceful still and quiet. Yes it can take the form of crying. I cried throughout yesterday and each tears meant different things from gratitude to requests to confessions and so on. Other times it could just be coiling up on the chair or bed and saying “Yes Lord” or “I trust you” or “I need you Holy Spirit” in my heart because I'm too numb to speak or cry.

Whatever it is, this is a journey of oceans and depths and this is the beginning phase and the extent to which I would find Him and know His heart is relative to the level of expression that I allow calm (peace; quiet and still). That is in being, because He doesn't just call me calm, calm is who is I am.

Oceans and depths.

M A N D A T E: Allow peace gain expression and you'll be surprised at how the questions even though unanswered will not raise doubts and uneasiness. He whispers the sweetest of words in the quiet of our souls.