I want to share about Morning Watch and the joy it is to me. Morning Watch is prophetic worship and prayer every Wednesday morning from 7-8 at our church. Yes…prayer that early in the morning. And it’s at the perfect time – right in the middle of the week, the perfect pick-me-up time. I have attended Morning Watch in the past, occasionally, but was never able to make a regular practice of it. However, at the beginning of the year, the Lord began to grace me with a renewed fervor for the first things (Revelation 2:5, Matthew 22:37-38), and early one Wednesday morning, after getting Justice settled back in his bed, I decided not to go back to bed, but to go to prayer instead.
I started that Wednesday morning praying for some things that were on my mind, but right in the middle of all my asking and seeking and knocking, I felt compelled to just stop, and kneel before the Lord. And as I bowed down and laid my face on the floor, I heard Jesus say, “There you are.” I was immediately taken back to the time we had our first ultrasound of our first baby. I was staring at that little monitor, straining to make something out the images and, all of a sudden, he moved and peeked his little face out at us. My breath caught in my chest as I said, “There you are!” Jesus responded to me the same way I responded to seeing my baby for the first time, reminding me of the way He feels when we turn our face to Him. It had been such a long time since I had just placed myself at Jesus’s feet that I had forgotten. But there, laying on the floor of our church, I remembered how it feels to hear Him call my name, how good it feels to just sit and cry in His presence. As I left the church that morning and headed back home I thought, “This is going to be good.”
I can’t express how much I look forward to Wednesday mornings now. It is not a duty or a burden, but a joy. It is such a sweet time when I feel the Lord so near. “The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” ~Psalm 145:18 The Lord has begun to stir my affections for Him again, and I have returned to the things I use to do.