Standing on the Edge of Revelation

 

(picture from wallpapercave.com)

To me, intimacy is a big deal. I want intimacy with the people in my life.

I’ve noticed, though, that so many people in my life would rather keep to themselves. They don’t seem to want intimacy with their friends and family members. It’s not that they seem to have some big, deep, dark secrets in their lives that they’re hiding from people. Maybe it’s just that in a society that affords us so little privacy, they’re trying to create a private place. Maybe it’s just a matter of boundaries, of which I have too few.

The other night, in the middle of an emotional prayer… I may have gained a little insight on intimacy - or the fear of it. 

With great excitement, I prayed -

Heavenly Father, I love You. I adore You. I worship You! Help me to revel in You, to delight in You, to walk in Your presence and breathe my every breath in You, to bring my every thought to You.

Help me to see you with my spiritual eyes. I know that You see all of me. Allow me to see inside of You, allow me to look into Your heart. I need to see what You see, to feel what You feel.

Then, suddenly, I was afraid to see.
I looked away. My excitement went from a rolling boil to the simmering of a desperate plea.

Father, draw me close. Draw me closer and closer until I'm nestled in Your arms and can feel Your breath against my face and our hearts beat together as one. You created me and know my inner most thoughts, fears and longings, You know my desire to be completely immersed in You.

Don't let me go.
Hold me tight.
I need You.

Knowing intimacy is shared, fear wrapped her boney fingers around my tongue.

Now my prayer was filled with weeping.

Your love will be too great! Your pain will be too deep.
I feel as though I'll sink into the vast pool of Your love and the depth will overwhelm me.
If I drown in Your love, though I'm so terribly afraid of drowning, yet, let me abide there. Saturate me.
I long to explore the untouched places in Your heart.

Still afraid, but reassurance begins to creep in.

Your Word so often reminds me to fear not...
Your mercy exposes Your patience with me.
Your grace displays Your compassion for me.

I want to run completely into You. No looking back. No hesitation.
You didn’t give me a spirit of fear or timidity! You gave me Your Spirit of power, and of love and of a sound mind.

 

Questioning and reasoning peek into the conversation.

 

What will it take to step forward and leave my fear behind? What am I afraid to commit?
You are my Lord, my Savior, my God and my King. Surely my heart will explode with Your love. That’s a good thing! That’s the goal!

 

Submission falls over me with refreshing peace.

 

Father, replace any fear in me with Your holy boldness.
Have mercy on me, Lord. Snatch me up into Your arms of grace. Rescue me.
Again.

Again, I fell asleep as God continued to work on entwining my heart with His.

(from thommiodem.com)

Half-full? Half-empty?

 

(picture from esmemes.com)

Half-full? Half-empty? Refill, please?

“If I meet your needs, you look to me; if I point you to Jesus, you look to Him to meet your needs.”

I can be a very giving person. If there’s any such thing as being too giving, I think I may fall into that trap sometimes. When I muster up the courage to tell someone “no” in response to a request for help or for a chunk of my time, I feel selfish.

I’ve shared memes on social media about self-care, and I’ve actually had friends respond in a way that judged me for not always putting other people first. But, at some point, if you’re not refilling your own “joy tank” or “happy tank” – where your energy is stored up, it runs dry.

If I’m pouring a drink from a pitcher into the glasses of the many people around me, eventually, I’ll need to go back for more. The pitcher isn’t bottomless, and neither are we.

(picture from thespruceeats.com)

I rejoice in my husband, who regularly sees when I’m feeling dry and knows how to help me refill. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a drive in the mountains. Other times, it takes a little more. He’s there for me.

It would be, not only wrong, but sinful for me to expect him to be the source of my refilling, though.

God uses Dave in my life for sooooo many things, one of them is to prompt me to slow down, or to rest, to refill my empty tank.

Sadly, sometimes, he comes last or feels the brunt of my frustrations when I’m feeling stretched – because I know he’ll always love me, unconditionally. 

Dave exemplifies the scripture: “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loves His church…” – Ephesians 5:25 (KJV)

Is he perfect? No. Is he perfect for me? YES! There’s not a doubt in my mind that God created us for each other, brought us together and has kept us together through the decades.

But, God has taught me along the way, that Dave is not the One Who gets to sit on the throne of my heart. That’s reserved for my Creator – the Lover of my soul.

Dave helps me refill my sanity reservoirs best when he’s pointing me back to Jesus. Sometimes that’s by taking me out into nature. Sometimes, it’s when he prays with and for me. Always, it’s as he loves me.

 So, know that it’s out of love when I say this: “If I meet your needs, you look to me; if I point you to Jesus, you look to Him to meet your needs.”

It’s out of love when you say it, too. Learn it. Believe it. Say it. Now, we get to work out what this looks like in our lives.

God’s reserves never run dry. We can always draw from Him. When we love each other and serve each other in our own strength, we set ourselves up to fall. When we love with God’s love and direct people to our Source, life gets a whole lot easier and less frustrating. We can actually be happy people!

(picture from braintap.com)

Is God Still God?

Is God still God when “He doesn’t answer our prayers”?

The short answer – yes!

But, since when do I use short answers?

When we pray, particularly when we pray for someone else, or over a situation involving someone else, they continue to have the freedom to choose; as do we.

They can choose to rebel against God, as can we. (Assuming what we were praying over them was included in the will of God.)

When we’re praying for someone else, the best way we can pray is for God to get a hold of their heart, for Him to reveal Himself to them in an undeniable way. But, instead, we often pray for them to make a choice in a matter that’s pleasing to us.

When they don’t comply, God gets the blame and often, we stop praying for them; we “give up on them”. Ouch!

We lose sight of our part in their heart softening toward God; they’re salvation or they’re deliverance, or whatever God is doing in their lives.

They’re left hanging and we become angry and bitter with the God of our salvation, the God Who loves us eternally, more than our human hearts can imagine. We’ll miss out on so many blessings while we’re stewing in our bitterness.

When we pray, our faith doesn’t disappear when things don’t go our way; that’s when faith is really tested.

God already knows your faith is plenty strong enough to hold on. Do you? Ah, yes, that’s who you’re proving it to. Each test of faith we rise above is showing us just how strong that mustard seed of faith, planted in our heart, really is.

Turn around. Run to Jesus. Right now.

It may involve tears.

It’ll definitely involve forgiveness, both giving and receiving.

Now is not the time to give up on prayer. Now is the time to seek God’s face all the more passionately. We’ve still got a lot of living to do, a lot of mountains to climb, a lot of joy to be expressed!

You’re in my heart, you’re in my prayers.

But, more importantly, God has not turned His back on you. Run to Him. Now.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)

To Get His Point Across

This morning as I woke up praying and thanking God for all the good things in my life I got a mental image of an old man, one that looks a bit like pictures of ancient philosophers, maybe Plato, writing in a book. He leaned his head on one hand while contemplating what to write with a fancy quill in the other.

Joy welled up inside of me as I thanked God for evident blessings. I wanted to just thank Him for being God. Is that something He can even be thanked for? He is God.

John 3:16 came to mind; For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son… He gave His Son. He GAVE His Son. To whom did He give His Son? [Selah]

I know He gave His Son for me, to bear the punishment for my sin, in my place. So I realize what He gave His Son for – but to?

He gave His Son to us, His lost and dying people. But moreso, as I watched this old man in my mind looking at what he wrote, it dawned on me; God gave His Son for His Word. To back up His own words, His own decrees, He chose to give up His only begotten Son. It was necessary to fulfill His own words.

God could have torn the pages from His book and started over again. He could have declared a new decree.

God decreed that the penalty for sin is death. He needed a spotless sacrifice to pay that penalty, knowing that there was none on earth without sin, none spotless. I don’t believe God wrestled with this choice. He made it not only out of love for us, but out of respect for His own Word. He valued the power and authority of His own Word so much that He kept it. He’s not a man that He should lie, or change His mind.

As I pondered on this image of an old man writing the most important of all documents, I realized: The covenant was with Himself – He could have changed the terms of agreement. But He wrote, or spoke that covenant – and kept His end of it….