Wise men still seek Him not through study or intellectual knowledge, but in the depth, silence and peace of their own hearts. Dear and sweet Lord, in this new year filled with new distractions please help us to choose Your Peace over the chaos.
Your peace you have freely given, but in our helplessness we still haven’t chosen it. Please take our hands and lead us to choose Your Peace!
I tell you, on the day of judgement people will give account for every careless word they speak.
– Matthew 12:36
Yikes… does this make anyone else nervous? I read this verse today with more attention than ever before, and I thought to myself, “After every other word out of my mouth should be “forgive me”, “I am sorry”, or “thank You”.”
Please pray for me, at the moment I am spiraling down a tunnel of annoyance at almost everything and my patient husband has to listen to a long list of things that annoyed me throughout the day most nights (I am pretty sure that I am annoying him). This is not my usual state of mind, I don’t like it, and I am sure I have spoken many careless, thoughtless, and inconsiderate words while stuck in the muck of my annoyance.
Thank You sweet Lord, thank you sweet friends and please forgive me.
Twelve years ago my husband and I were married, we became one, but I don’t think I ever took it as seriously as God meant for it to be taken. Yes, we have been married and faithful and loving. We have been blessed with three wonderful children, and we spend lots of time together, but I don’t think I have really believed or thought that we are truly and physically one.
Mark 10:8
And the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two but one flesh.
A few months ago, I started thinking about this bible verse and wondered if truly we were truly made into one and given the same heart on that wonderful day of our marriage. Have I ever behaved as if we truly have one heart? Have I inflicted damage or scars on our heart through hurtful words, arguments and fights? Have I ever tried to pull or push away hard enough to create a rip in our heart or to break our heart? Has God ever had to carefully sew our new heart back together? Has our heart grown stronger throughout the years or have we inflicted scars that will forever be weak spots that might break more easily?
I don’t know the answers, but after I started thinking about this I began trying to literally, physically and spiritually live life as one with my husband. I began by talking with him in my heart and praying for him throughout the day while he is as work. During yoga classes I started praying that the strength, flexibility and peace gained in class were flowing to him. Talking, laughing and doing homework with our children after school, I began praying that he was sharing in our time together. Finally when I mess up which is often, I beg forgiveness from him and from our Lord (this one isn’t new), but now when he messes up I beg forgiveness from our Lord because if I truly believe that we are one then my mistakes are still mine, but his mistakes are now mine too.
Most of you reading this probably think I am a little crazy and spend way too much time in my own head. I will never really know the answers, but I don’t think that is really the point. From my little experiment I do know that I see my husband more and I love him more.
I pray that it is true, I pray that our sweet Lord truly gave us one heart, our heart!
I spend a lot of time thinking about things I have read, watched or discussed and wondering about interesting or different connections. I love to call these long and extended thought processes my secret thoughts. My sweet husband always listens faithfully, and sometimes I share them with others, but not often.
One passage in the bible that I have been thinking about on and off for a while is Matthew 8:28-32.
And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.
What is the point of this? Why are the pigs included? Originally I thought of it as a followup to Leviticus when the Israelites were told not to eat the flesh of the pig. I figured that this was further confirmation on how much God dislikes pigs, but this explanation never really felt right.
Then this passage came up again and I was thinking about it immediately on the heels of reading, Matthew 7: 7-8…
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
And it occurred to me that the demons had asked Jesus to send them into the herd of pigs, and He had given them their request. Maybe what God is demonstrating in this passage is that if even a demon can ask and then be given his request, then we must realize how much more Jesus and Our Father in Heaven desire for us to ask so that They can give us our request.
Obviously I don’t know the answer, but I know my thoughts and I know the time put into pondering and developing this secret thought can be thought of as time spent polishing a little pearl God buried within my heart. When I did share this thought with someone new, I finally experienced what it was like to cast my pearls before swine. My thoughts were trampled and dismissed and I was upset and hurt for a little while, but now after the hurt has passed I am left regretfully wondering whose pearls have I trampled?
Sweet Lord, please help us to tread gently so that instead of trampling the pearls of others we might have a chance to discover them, learn from them, admire them and cherish them! Also please help us to ask YOU with full faith that YOU will give! You have proven it time and time again… it is our memories that constantly fail!
Sweet friends, we must pray with confidence in our Sweet Father’s ability to do anything and believing in full faith that our sweet Father in Heaven longs to answer and provide the purest desires of our heart!
Do not pray in fear, instead pray in confidence. In our minds and hearts we must release Him from whatever box we have tried to build around Him and place all confidence, trust, belief, faith in Him.
We might watch the news, see the homeless, see the refugees, see the slaves or look in the mirror and see our greed, see our sin and then for a moment teeter on the brink of despair, but look up, look up and see Him, the biggest, bravest, strongest and most amazing Father who knows it is all worth it, everything is worth it… and then smile as the sweet Holy Spirit renews our confidence in Him.
Thank You sweet Father for everything, thank You sweet Holy Spirit for our renewed confidence and faith moment by moment, thank You sweet Jesus for being YOU!
So many believe our tears are a sign of weakness, because they don’t know Your secret sweet Lord. They don’t understand that in the moments of our tears, we are powerful as You fill us with Your Holy Spirit and He fills us with Your strength!
Lord, thank you for all of the tears that flow so freely from my eyes in moments of both joy and sorrow. I feel so close to You in these extreme and powerful moments of my life and I long to fill these moments with gratitude and prayer.
Please soften our hard hearts sweet Lord, and release the flood gates of the tears that so many hold back in fear of what the world believes.
I used to live in Chicago. I worked downtown and walked by the corner of State and Washington almost everyday. As I was walking by, almost every evening a preacher was standing at the corner with a microphone and speaker addressing everyone walking by.
I never stopped to really listen, but in the hundreds of times I walked by I know I heard him talk about the fires of hell and our need to repent. Unfortunately the few times I even took notice of him, I thought to myself, “Oh my… he’s crazy!”
As I read a passage about John the Baptist this week, I thought about John’s passion and how many at that time thought he was crazy, and my friend back in Chicago came to mind. I am starting to think it would be better to be standing next to him and labeled “crazy” than to be swept away by the desires of this world.
Lord, thank you for creating other souls that are overflowing with passion for You. Please open my eyes to their example of love and zeal for You alone and rise up in me a great passion for You and Your Will and please remove my internal and self imposed obstacles so that I too might someday provide a safe harbor for at least four of Your little souls from the rushing river of this world.
I always find it so interesting that we are broken and living in a broken world, yet there is still so much more within us that must be broken in order draw closer to God.
He wants to break us slowly, like a mighty cliff that is gradually broken down by the ocean into individual grains of sand, but so often He comes across our resistance and it is then that a great rock from our cliff will come crashing down all at once and oh how it hurts.
Oh Lord, please remove our resistance so that we might all one day flow within your great ocean.
Thy Will Be Done, Oh Lord!
I saw a man high on a hill. As I climbed the hill trying to reach him, the terrain became steep. I called out to him asking for help. He didn’t move and I realized he could not hear. I waved my arms trying to get his attention and then realized he could not see.
Oh the irony and the great sorrow, that I have ears to hear and eyes to see my endless failures and flaws that keep me from ever reaching that beautiful summit, and his ears do not hear and his eyes do not see to let him realize that he has reached that beautiful summit.
Oh my sweet Lord, the thought of this is frightening and painful… please open our eyes to see and our ears to hear.
Sometimes I feel as if our sweet Lord is letting me sit in a state of limbo because I refuse to fully accept His will. He gives me opportunities to prove my trust and faith in Him, and I fail time and time again as I stress, obsess and can’t sleep at night over little situations in my life.
He could really shake things up for me by ripping everything I grasp so tightly away, but instead of feeling His temper flare I feel His love as He again gently gives me another chance to prove my trust and faith in Him.
Please my Lord, deepen my faith and trust in You, turn me towards prayer instead of stress and obsession, and continue to gently guide me out of limbo towards an eternal union with You!