Dancing With Jesus
A dear friend of mine once took me through the process of actually inviting Jesus into my heart. I was already saved, but I had so many walls up around my heart. I thought I was just keeping people I didn’t want in there out, but I learned that I had been keeping everyone out, including Jesus. So as she took me through this process, she told me to close my eyes and imagine that I was in a house and Jesus was knocking on the door. I then imagined that I had opened the door and invited Him inside. Ever since that moment, I’ve had the tendency to go back to that house from time to time.
Well on one particular morning, I spent some time worshipping Jesus to some songs I hadn’t heard before. During one of them, I had such a sweet moment with Jesus. I had closed my eyes and began to see myself in this house. It was obvious that it had been through some major changes. Cleaning, remodeling, painting... it almost looked like a completely different house. As I looked around at all of the changes, I began to see me and Jesus dancing in the middle of the floor.
I was in awe at the picture. You see, this house used to have a TON of walls everywhere. The walls separated the foyer, the living room, the kitchen, and the dining room. That seems pretty normal for a house, right? Well I began to see those walls as clutter. I couldn’t see clearly, breathe easily, or function properly surrounded by all of these walls. So, I decided to get rid of them. When it came time to get to work, I put on some safety glasses, picked up a sledge hammer, and went to town. I thought that’s what needed to happen to get the job done, but Jesus had other plans. He just stood there watching me, waiting for me to realize that He wasn’t helping me. Once I did notice and stopped to ask why He wasn’t doing anything, He kindly took the sledge hammer from me and proceeded to very carefully peel off the sheetrock so that He wouldn’t make a huge mess that would just need to be cleaned up later. Once all the sheetrock was gone and all you could see was the wooden frame, He very carefully chose which nails to remove first, allowing certain boards to be pulled out ever so gracefully (kind of like the way you would remove a game piece in a Jinga tower). He explained to me that He was careful, because He knew which beams were supporting the rest of the house and that if He removed things out of order, then the whole house could come crumbling down. Jesus told me that if I would just let Him do all the work for me, it might take longer than I would like, but the job would be done right so it wouldn’t have to be redone later. All I had to do was be there with Him and be willing to let Him do the work. This was kind of hard since I rather liked the idea of swinging that heavy hammer, but I agreed to let Him do His thing.
So now, when I look into this house, there are no walls. I can see every room from any point in the house. There are three columns in the middle that help support the structure, but they take up very little room. There’s still room to move around without frustration. There’s still room to host parties and have plenty of space for everyone. There’s still room to dance. The house still isn’t perfect, but it has been greatly improved.
This whole image gave me a new perspective on the seasons we go through in life. When we dance to a slow song, we tend to move in closer to our partner. There doesn’t seem to be as much movement, but each step is so intentional. You may even share a look that makes you feel like you’re the only two people in the whole world. This is the same in our slower seasons of life when we choose to spend that time with Jesus. Sometimes, He slows things down to draw us closer to Him, so He can whisper those sweet nothings in our ear that we may not hear if we didn’t slow down. In these seasons, it may seem like nothing is happening. Life might feel boring or confined, but this is usually a time of growing and preparation for what God is going to bring us into next.
What about the faster dances? Well, these usually get our heart rate up, right? There are so many moves and they are so quick that we may wonder if we will even be able to keep up. Maybe our feet aren’t fast enough... maybe we aren’t coordinated enough... maybe we will fall or stumble... until the arms wrapped around us remind us that we are not dancing alone. These arms take us into each step of the dance. They hold us, lead us, guide us... they insure us that we will not fall. Then, when we remember that those arms wrapped around us belong to Jesus, we can enjoy the dance, the moment, the season even more. We stop worrying. We stop fearing. We stop overthinking things. We stop second-guessing our ability to dance and just follow His lead. Joy overcomes everything else. These seasons are when God begins to open doors in our lives and things we’ve been praying for start to happen. At first, we allow the enemy to fill us with worry and fear, because sometimes we fail and things don’t work out. On top of that, we are moving so fast it’s hard to keep from getting dizzy and losing focus. But then we remember who we are—WHOSE we are—and we begin to embrace the fullness of our Father’s love and His ability to blow our minds with His goodness.
Sometimes, these seasons of life have a lot to do with our dreams. If you haven’t lost all hope, then you have dreams in your heart right now. Big dreams and small dreams. Dreams that seem impossible and dreams that scare you. God sees your dreams and cares about them. He even wants you to achieve them! I mean, He is the one that placed them there. He isn’t going to give you a dream and not the provision you need to fulfill it. That’s just not who He is.
Those slow seasons—slow dances—tend to make you think that your dreams are never going to happen. But God is the DJ. He is the one in control of which song plays next. There are times when we think we know what song we are ready for next, but God knows us better than we know ourselves. Most of the time we think we are ready for a certain song, then God plays one that takes us by surprise and we have to readjust our rhythm.
It’s amazing how this world or our society has a way of making us believe that it’s too late, or we’re too old, or it’s too much money, or we’re not good enough, or we’ve done so much bad in our life there’s no way we could possibly do anything good now. That’s satan for you. He will use anyone and anything, including the people in your life that you love the most, to keep you from the life that God wants you to have. He doesn’t want us to amount to anything. If we do, we might tell other people about it and how it happened—WHO made it all possible.
Well let’s just stop! Let’s stop listening to those lies! Stop believing that you can’t open that business or plan that wedding or have a big family or go on that amazing trip across the world or get that dream job or go back to school or write a book. Stop letting the enemy bully you into contentment and mediocrity. God has more for you! Dare to dream. Dare to pray for those dreams. Dare to believe in those dreams. DREAM. PRAY. BELIEVE. Then be ready and just let it happen. Because it will.
“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his might power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Ephesians 3:20 (NLT)