A Sweet Reminder

I feel badly for leaving you with the last post and no follow up...though your many encouraging comments (and even a phone call or two) were deeply appreciated. We have headed into our second busiest season at work, and I don't have as much time to post here now as I would like. However...This is what I should have shared with you on Sunday:

Worship on Sunday was...wonderful. I LOVE singing God's praises with His people. I think I would never tire of that. And as is so often true, it is in the midst of those special times of worship that God whispers truths into my heart.

This past Sunday was no exception. And here is what He whispered:

J, I must bring you to the place where you are empty and needy so that I might fill you with Me.

Except God is so much more eloquent than I can duplicate here. But those non-word truths that He 'spoke' into my heart? They were a healing salve to my soul.

It's not the first time that He's said such a thing to me. And honestly, it probably won't be the last. But His gentle, tender voice reminding me of greater things than I can imagine...I will never grow tired of that either.

I so truly love the One who has loved me with such infinite, depthless love. His hand nudges my chin upward just when I have lost sight of the greater things. He is answering my deepest prayers...that I might KNOW Him. That I might gaze upon His beauty. That I might become a moon to His glory. That there might be less of me, and more--ever more--of Him. That I might be desperate for Him. And to get there, I must be emptied.

This life...this life isn't about what I DO. I forget that a lot. Our society measures things that way and sometimes it just seeps into my soul. This life is about getting to know the lover of our souls. I recently found a 3x5 card I stuck in my Bible about a year and a half ago. I had written myself a note when--in the middle of a conversation--I had an "a-ha!" moment. And here is what I wrote:

"My purpose isn't in my task; it's in my relationship. Point your nose toward His throne."

Not Shakespeare, but it IS what I so often miss/forget/ignore. I was placed here to do good works--that's true. But those good works must flow out of my RELATIONSHIP with the one who ordained those good works for me to do.

You've probably mastered this truth already. Me? I'm a bit of a slow learner myself. But with such a gentle, grace-giving schoolmaster, someday I'll get this down. And in the interim, feel free to remind me to point my nose toward His throne.

And if we could sing His praises together a bit more, I might get there a little bit faster.

Never out of His grip or His plan,
-J




But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. --Ephesians 2:4-10, NIV
(c) 2008