The Song of the Redeemed

The students arrive in 5 days! This morning I woke up with that “thirsty” feeling-where you can barely go one more moment without God’s word. You must run to the well and drink it in.
In my cup, God answered a prayer.
I had a hard time coming to New York this summer. In all honesty, I had so much going on at home and making plans for the future that I didn’t give much thought to New York. I cataloged it as: that quick adventure before things move on again. Upon arrival, this aching sense that God had something more and I was to find out-and better seek and find-fast. I had to repent too, that my motives fell short of God’s glory and landed on my comfort.
Yesterday, I prayed, “Lord, I ask for your vision for New York. Consume me in what you’ve planned for this land.”
Today, I saw:
A hope for New York
--- a rising of the fog: the deception of the enemy that the voice of scoffers is mightier than the Lord, the loneliness and escape pursued, and the weeping in the hearts of many.
God is lifted high.
He speaks truth of love and mercy, offered to all-drowning out the scoffers. He offers reality that, YES, you can live an abandoned life larger than yourself. He wipes away the tears of the widow, the orphan, the lost, the lonely, the disenfranchised, the invisible, the untouchable, the broken, and the prisoner.
He has come to redeem all.
I see The Most High on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe spreads through the streets of Manhattan.
All are filled with an everlasting joy. The song of the redeemed resonates, “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty the whole earth is full of your glory.”

I pray for these 21 students, 70 in the whole project, that they would be captured by your vision Lord. That they would throw off everything that hinders. I pray their eyes would be FIXED on Jesus-fixed with dove’s eyes, that they would consider Him, day after day, consider his character again and again. That they would not grow weary or lose heart. They would not labor in vain but would take the fruits of their labor and allow Jesus to own the results.