Written by a Cafe 1040 Student

Cover the Earth—let the spirit rise up—let him break through the walls, beat down the doors and crash through the windows and cover this upper room.

R* came over tonight because she wanted to learn more about church. We started by singing “Nothing I hold onto” then got to explain every verse and where it comes from in the Bible. It was incredible to realize why we sing what we do. Then R said, “I really love the song called ‘Hallelujah’ and we sang it then told her about the story of David and Bathsheba in the Bible! We related it to Psalm 51 where David is crying out to God after he had been called out in His sin from that story.

 We explained that God doesn’t care about burnt offerings and altar worship—what He desires is our broken heart. The word literally says that!! So relevant. Then we explained that this is one of the many sins Jesus had to come and die for. We told her about Solomon, David’s son, and my teammate read through that entire book and showed R the way God pursues us through the way Solomon pursues the Shulamite woman.

 We started to tell her the story of Creation and all began to cry as we read the first quote in the Bible. We realized that we are apart of God’s plan of redemption over all mankind. God makes such beautiful miracles out of our most disgusting and sorrowful mistakes. He is so much bigger than our darkest of pasts. Bathsheba gave birth to Solomon: a man who divinely pursues the Shulamite woman the way Dad pursues the church.

As we’re reading Solomon tell the woman “your eyes are like doves” R realizes she has a photograph of doves from the other morning. Then we read about a secret garden, and she realizes she has a photograph of that too. Then she shows us her photographs of an church from her hometown and we look again at the project she’s been doing on eyes, and then it became obvious that God is pursuing her through her photography…WHAT! That Dad makes Himself so known to her through the avenue which she is so passionate. Wow- okay so this is happening and we decide we have to pray and right as we begin it starts POURING RAIN! And by pouring rain I mean the flood gates of heaven just started pouring down—ugh I have goosebumps again.

When we finish, my teammate continues to go through the book of Songs and she talks about the way Solomon still loves/flirts with his wife and R cuts her off and she’s like “bro I was just mindlessly scrolling on Instagram this morning and the only thing that stuck out to me was this quote that said ‘get a husband who still flirts with you when you’re 80.’ ”.

 After that we read her Rom 8,20-39 to say that the same love Solomon has for His bride is the same love that God has for us and I replaced the pronouns with her name. It was so surreal to read absolute truth over her, someone who had never ever heard it before. To see her falling in love with God is so beautiful—to read that absolutely nothing can keep her from the love of God is so incredible. His pursuit is ceaseless.

She asked if we could sing Nothing I hold Onto again, and it honestly brought me to tears to hear R singing her heart out in praise to Dad for His goodness, wow there is nothing sweeter. To seal the night I read her Eph 4 about how deep and wide and long is his love for R and we lifted. She said our house was a place of peace and we told her it was because God dwells here. After she left we circled up with the other girls to lift and God created this picture for me of these old clocks inside R’s chest––and the gears inside the clocks were really dusty and hadn’t moved for a long while but tonight those gears started turning and the hands on the clock started spinning incredibly fast. It was like God was telling her “See R, I’ve been in love with you this whole time. Since the beginning of time—this has been my plan from the beginning, to redeem and rescue you.” R told us a couple days later that she’s been having thoughts about God like crazy. She says when she listens to worship music she feels God hugging her, and she’s had a reoccurring dream where all of her friends are singing praises to God together, even though none of them are believers. She has been learning more worship songs on the guitar and coming over to teach them to us. Praise God for His faithfulness. 

 *Names changed for security