“The answer is yes. Now what is the question?”

Matt Lewis - 24-7 Prayer SA National Gathering

Ufanelwe Jesu

(You are worthy Jesus)

Nguwe wedw’ofanalwe Jesu

(You alone are worthy Jesus)

“The answer is yes. Now what is the question?”

It’s a phrase I learned from my friend Jill Weber.

I didn’t know what I was saying yes to when I agreed to serve 24-7 Prayer South Africa for the first national gathering.

To be honest, I still don’t, not really.

It’s hard to know what trees a seed will grow until it cracks the earth and lifts its limbs to touch the sky.

It’s hard to know what worlds our words will build until we’re dancing in the streets of those worlds, together. 

These have been sacred days. Not easy, but sacred. 

There were Truths released that, if I’m honest, I would rather not hear. 

Truth is a profound inconvenience sometimes. It often stings before it sets us free. Which is precisely why, if freedom is what we’re after, we might need to get used to some measure of discomfort. 

At least until we’re more conformed to the patterns of His world than our own. 

He called us to rest. I didn’t think that rest would call for all my idols to fall. I somehow forgot that our Good God is not interested in fleeting anesthesias that neither diagnose nor seek to truly heal the wounds that have so corrosively worn us down and dredged our souls to empty in the first place. 

Our Good God is committed to our wholeness. 

To the vision of the Church that He paid for. The rest we truly seek, the kind He hopes to give, is more the gift of surgery than it is of a sedative. 

What does this have to do with prayer? Quite simply, everything, and if we can’t see that we probably still have some returning to do. 

I didn’t know what I was signing up for. 

To be honest, I still don’t. 

But wherever this yes takes me, whatever surgeries I’ll need to endure. 

Ufanelwe Jesu.