I’m feeling a bit nostalgic this week. The decision has been made to pull from the shelf, the Renewal Weekends I’ve been hosting for the past three years. It is simply time.

With 50 women who have participated over these three years, the weekends have been rich times of being washed with the goodness of God over our hearts and spirits.

Every single weekend was a fresh revelation of the heart of God. And every single weekend saw miracles of heart and souls and even bodies.

And I learned two primary lessons hosting these retreats. The first thing I learned was to,

1. Show Up

I started hosting these weekends during the initial and hardest years of my marriage’s separat ion. And many weekends I would come simply awash with grief and with my soul cast-down.

With little to give, a few times with literally nothing to give, I showed up, and God did the rest. I learned, really learned, that when I am at my very worst, that if I simply show up God takes over from there.

The most amazing weekends, the weekends with physical healing and the most powerful anointing, were the weekends when I came flat out broken in terms of my own person.

Which leads me to the second thing I learned.

2. It’s Not My Work

I really got it, over those weekends when I had nothing to give, that this isn’t my work. The power of the Holy Spirit to breathe through hearts and minds, spirits and bodies, is not our work.

The incredible revelations of God’s heart over every particle of who each woman is, was not my work.

I really got, It’s not our work. And this will never leave me. It is a large part of why and how I am in every aspect today. We are simply the canvas upon which God paints.

And as conduits of God’s grace and love, we simply must be available, so that the living God can blow through at a hundred miles an hour. We really are just the vessel.

Today, with the work I do, be it in Prayer Ministry on home ground, or in Ministry to dozens in Africa, I know the same is true.

As I simply show up, God does the rest.

As human beings we tend to make things so much more difficult than they are.

But it really comes down to, show up and let God do the rest.

Heading back to Uganda in less than two weeks I am expecting the same.

I’m showing up, and God will do the work.