The fact that we can find God’s presence in the absence of all else makes it even more profound.
Category: Devotions
Where do we go when our soul suffers wounding? Psalm 119:28 tells us: we climb into the bacta tank of scripture. We find healing in the ancient yet alive promises of God. Our soul is somehow miraculously restored by the lasting power of His holy Word.
Don’t miss this: our inattention to the things of God causes Jesus great sorrow. He wept over the state of things in the holy city and He will weep over us if we neglect Him.
It’s interesting, on a Sunday afternoon errand, I discovered two sheep that moved into the area. “They are Dorper sheep”, their ninety-year-old owner informed me. He’d wanted a pair of Dorper sheep since he was a little boy. The sheep keeper leaned heavily into the saddle of his field-weary four wheeler and adjusted the cannula that fed oxygen to his failing heart. “Sheep are born looking for a place to die.” It was a startling sentence, especially as I considered the myriad of scriptural implications.
God has placed lovely limitations in each of our lives. These are natural boundaries that He has erected with full knowledge of how they might grow and stretch our souls. These limitations may not feel lovely when we bump up against them, but we know God’s character and He has laid them down in great affection for us, determined to grow us up into His image.
“There is a time for everything, and a session for eery activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time…
To ‘know’ as described in scripture is so much more than a simple introduction or a shared meal. Knowing implies a oneness, an intermingling of souls and an amalgamated future. To ‘know’ Christ is to abandon ourselves to Him entirely without regard for personal well-being or promotion. That being said, how many of us truly ‘know’ Him?
Spiritual maturity looks far different from physical maturity. It’s hands outstretched to receive prison guard or pauper attire. Feet set to follow a path to a place undesired. Spiritual maturity means saying ‘yes’ even when we are wholly unsure about the outcome or dreading the next temporary destination. The relationship with our God always trumps the unpleasantness of our circumstances. We trust our Father to take us Home and we will endure whatever might bring Him glory between here and there.
Thick skin is the easiest coping mechanism when we are living in a fallen world, but it’s not the coping mechanism that God intended for us to take on.
Someone told me on Tuesday how the word ‘priority’ has been singular for hundreds of years. By it’s very meaning, a priority could only be one thing, but in the last few decades, we’ve pluralized it and in the same swoop of the pen: diluted it. Loving God cannot be one of our priorities: no, He must be the priority.