Humbled again

For months I have been waking up at 4:38 am. Sometimes I fall back asleep and sometimes I get up, but very regularly when I check the clock it says, 4:38. I sit here on this blog talking about listening, looking, watching and waiting for Him, but when it comes down to it, I don’t follow my own advice very well.

It finally occurred to me to look up 4:38 verses in the Bible and I was reminded and humbled again. He gives us what is not ours and what we have not earned and He plucks us from the pit and places us high on the backs and shoulders of mighty giants.

When we realize and remember this, there is nothing to do but live every moment in humble thanksgiving and love.

John 4:38
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.

Deuteronomy 4:38
…to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

His Master Plans

… But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from His presence.
2 Samuel 14:14

I read this today and was filled with gratitude and thanksgiving that He is in charge, the master plans are His!  I love that He changes them, adding and devising new plans with new paths to bring us home into His presence.

Thank You sweet Father for leading us home!

Vibrations

Sweet Lord as we surrender to Your Holy Will – could it be true that the vibrations of love flowing from our our hearts compose a beautiful symphony for You in Your Heavenly Courts?

The Greek word sumphoneo, where we get our modern English word Symphony is used to describe being in agreement, in unison, in one accord, to speak together, to concur with one another.  Thank you to Lowell Hohstadt for this definition.

Sweet Lord – I thank You for granting us such an amazing gift and privilege to fill Your Heavenly Courts with beautiful music when our hearts are aligned with Your Holy Will!

Matthew 18:19-20
Jesus said, “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.  For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

Ephesians 5:18-19
… be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord…

Intersections

When two opposing lines, a vertical line and a horizontal line, intersect they create a cross – just like the cross our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, was crucified on.  On that ancient cross, at that intersection, heaven and earth collided, yet we forget… opposites and intersections are a part of our everyday lives and I think heaven can be found at these intersections.

My friends – seek the intersections, seek the opposites and when you find them fall to your knees in worship, prayer and gratitude as if you were before that very first intersection, the cross carrying our sweet and precious Lord, Jesus.

Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
– 
Luke 23:46

Blessed are the eyes that truly see…

On New Year’s Eve we had dinner with our family.  I love going around the table and giving everyone a chance to give thanks for something from the year.

As always when it was my turn, my eyes welled up with tears, my throat became tight and my sweet girls lovingly said, “There she goes again… Mommy’s going to cry.”  We all started laughing and as I was wiping away my tears and getting ready to speak, my sweet husband quietly spoke and said, “Sarah is thankful for the wind as it blows through the trees, a leaf that falls in her path, a bird that soars past our kitchen window, a caterpillar she finds in the backyard… she is thankful for everything.”

Sweet Lord, I love the little reminders You place in our paths.  My sweet love truly sees me more than I realize and in that moment I felt so deeply understood and loved.  Oh my Lord… I am so blessed that he is mine, I am his and we are Yours!

Thank You, thank You, thank You… in every moment and in everything – Thank You sweet Jesus!

You are welcome

Isn’t it interesting that in english the correct response to Thank you is You are welcome?  You are gladly received or willingly permitted, admitted, accepted.  Where did this originate?  Perhaps a language expert could enlighten us on the true historical details of where this response originated from, but what if we let our imaginations roam for a bit?

Perhaps long ago there was a person or a group of people who truly passed on every Thank you they received to God knowing that anything they had done to deserve the gift of gratitude was from God, so in turn their response to Thank you changed from It was nothing or No problem and became You are welcome as an inspired message from God to communicate with others and let them know that they too were welcome in His Kingdom.

As I stretch my imagination to make this up tonight, I hope that my own responses to Thank you in the future will move away from the personally accepting phrases of No problem, It was nothing, and sure, to His inspired message of You are welcome with a prayer that I am nothing more than an instrument of communication.

 

Returning to innocence…

My grandmother is very sick and will probably die soon.  I don’t live in the same city so I haven’t seen her in a while, but my mom and dad continue to share the details of her days.

Her recent memories have begun to fade, while those from long ago remain.  She is again being fed her meals as she was when she was a little baby, and she is filled with the joy and gratitude of a child when each visitor arrives in her room.  As I watch and listen from a distance, it seems as if the layers, the years, the hurt and the pain are being stripped away from my grandmother and she is returning to the innocence of her childhood and the purity of her baptism.

I am again in awe of our Amazing Father in Heaven and His Amazing Plan that we can’t imagine or understand, but sometimes glimpse when the light of understanding hits the veil at just the right angle.

Thank You sweet Lord and please do what You must to strip us clean and bring us all home to You!

Missing You…

My friends, I am not sure why but I have been distracted lately.  Jesus hasn’t been at the forefront of my thoughts, instead I have been busy, running around, and missing Him.  We took a yoga class together last night, and usually when He joins me He is helping me through, but last night in my imagination He was sitting there watching me (smiling, but still just watching).  For some reason I have put Him aside instead of welcoming Him in?

As I miss Him, I am thankful for my previous posts that remind me that He is still here watching and waiting for me to call to Him again.

Please pray for me my friends, as you bask in His loving presence, that the veil covering me will be removed yet again, my eyes will be cleansed yet again, and again I will see only Him everywhere and in everyone!

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done!

A beautiful change

In Mark 11:24 Jesus says

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer,  believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

I love this statement in the Bible.  It has been very close to my heart for a long time and it is one of the reasons I so strongly (and selfishly) believed and prayed for My Best Life for so long and this statement again held true when I began believing and praying for Our Best Life.

I am starting to find it very interesting that the more we believe and the more faith we have, the less we ask for in prayer.  Jesus knew about this beautiful change that happens within our hearts when we believe and He buried this wonderful secret deep within His statement for us to find as our faith and belief increase.

Lord please help me to remember every day, every hour, and every minute to believe and to have faith in Your Will so that my prayers of request decrease and my prayers of love, thanksgiving and gratitude increase despite the weather within my life.

Lord thank You for Your Divine Will… it is full of love and goodness for EVERYONE.

Please let this be my prayer…

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, my Love.

Remember our true home!

I am not usually a cynic, but today after spending too much at the grocery I arrived home, checked the mail and found a magazine that had a picture of probably a $5 million dollar home on the front with the article titled, “Love your home!”, and I thought to myself… seriously?  Do the people writing and publishing this magazine really believe that looking at photos of this outrageously extravagant house will help me and others love our homes?  Seriously… do they really believe this?

I took the magazine straight to the recycling box, because I certainly know that looking at it would not help me to love my home, but I have been wondering why it bothered me so much today.  Most days this wouldn’t phase me or bother me, but it did today.

Maybe my annoyance with this magazine is because, as scary as it is to say or to type, in a way it reminds me of my own expensive home, of my own excess, of my own greed, and of my own issues with envy?  Maybe for a moment I forgot about my true home?

Lord please be with me and remove envy from my heart and replace it with Your generosity and gratitude because I long to always love the home You have given to me while I am here, but most of all I long to always remember that You are my true home.

Please help me, I can’t do it without You, my Love.