Tonight I was lying in bed after PD and I prayed and he\u00a0had fallen asleep.\u00a0 I desperately needed to talk to God.\u00a0 I haven’t been spending the time talking to Him that is so vital to maintain the life inside.\u00a0 As I lay there talking to Him, and felt His love and His grace and His life welling up like a fountain inside, I was overwhelmed by Him.\u00a0 It still baffles me how He can live inside of us so intensely… so incredibly real.\u00a0 How can He be there, where all my humanity and sinful tendencies lie?? But He is.\u00a0 His forgiveness is so secure.\u00a0 His grace is like an ocean.\u00a0 His love is unfathomable and unquenchable.\u00a0 His conviction is sweet.\u00a0 His LIFE is unending.\u00a0 He is real.\u00a0 He is there.\u00a0 He is not some distant figure who frowns upon us as He waits for us to attain a great measure of holiness before we can feel His Presence.\u00a0 His Presence reaches us when we admit our sinfulness and are honest about how much we need Him.\u00a0 His forgiveness removes our sin far from us and His love overwhelms our weak and faltering hearts.\u00a0 His grace pours over our insecurities and drowns them in the security of Himself.\u00a0 His LIFE resurrects through the death of ourselves… oh, ouch.\u00a0 Perhaps so many of us stop at the forgiveness and receive only little bits of His grace into our hearts at times because we are afraid to feel the pain of death.\u00a0 How often have I done it myself?? How often have I turned my face away from the Spirit of God because my heart was overwhelmed by fears.\u00a0 Oh, Lord, please forgive me for grieving your Spirit at times… for exchanging your LIFE for my fears.\u00a0 I would rather hang on to them because they are so familiar and limiting?\u00a0 But oh, to discover the fountain of joy that erupts when the pain and the death is accomplished within me!\u00a0 Like the little seed who at last lay cracked and splintered to reveal his worthlessness inside, still contracting from the last throes of pain as he surrendered to his fate… Suddenly, from above, the LIGHT shown through into his very heart and with that light came LIFE, beautiful, vibrant life erupting forth, engulfed by the warmth of the Son and straining toward Him with everything he has been given.\u00a0 Thank-you, Jesus!!!
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\nLast night, we visited PD’s parents,\u00a0 and I was searching through the bookshelves for a good book for my daughter to read.\u00a0 I stood there gazing at the wealth of good reading material… so many good books.\u00a0 ‘Faith’. ‘The Gift of Intercession’. ‘Complete in Christ’. ‘A Set Apart Life’.\u00a0 ‘The Purpose Driven Life’.\u00a0 ‘The Grace of God’.\u00a0 ‘The Bondage Breaker’.\u00a0
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\nThose are not all actual titles, but I am quite certain there was a book for each of those subjects, besides many more.\u00a0 I thought about our little joke about writing books, and how I actually would love to write one sometime if God gives the inspiration and the time.\u00a0 But I realized… another book to stash on our bookshelves would be nice… but even if people read it, and perhaps are even blessed and touched by God because of it, will it really make a difference??\u00a0 That got me thinking further.\u00a0 What will make the MOST difference?\u00a0 God will.\u00a0 So God can and does use books.\u00a0 But what is the most powerful tool in the hands of God and His people?\u00a0 Perhaps prayer?\u00a0 But even that, will it make a difference unless HE is in it and it is full of HIM and HIS life moving in our hearts towards Himself?\u00a0 So it must absolutely be the work of God for any of these good things to be genuine fruit of His Spirit and Presence in our lives.\u00a0 And what will move Him toward us but prayer… groanings of honesty from our own hearts reaching towards Him in faith?\u00a0 What will move His heart towards His faltering children to strengthen their faith but the prayers of their brothers and sisters??\u00a0 Is there really time to pour my life into anything else, or to have anything else poured into my life, but prayer??
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\nTonight… as I lay upon my bed and I thought of all the questions that I have heard coming out of the honest hearts of myself, my husband, my children, and my friends, those questions and groanings gave way to a picture in my mind of a group of hungry children, our arms outstretched and grasping heavenward, our eyes gleaming with tears and incredible hunger… we are reaching for life.\u00a0 We are reaching for Him.\u00a0 Some of us lose our way in the search.\u00a0 We become discouraged by\u00a0our circumstances,\u00a0not realizing that the things that make\u00a0us feel our inadequacies so keenly have been allowed by God in His mercy because He\u00a0knows they provide the best opportunities for us to find Him.\u00a0 Sometimes we are discouraged by\u00a0others who have quit their search, or become satisfied in the good things they have found.\u00a0 Some of us turn away from the light to find the answers within ourselves.\u00a0 We raid the resources and intellect God has given us, finding plenty of good theories and raising good questions, trying to analyze them and reach a logical conclusion.\u00a0 Yet we remain unsatisfied, for our conclusions are human, though the very best of humanity there is to be found. It is not enough.\u00a0 Others of us look within ourselves for the beauty we yearn for and we find some… but it doesn’t satisfy and we end up enjoying ourselves and disliking Christianity, but we are still hungry.
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\nWhile my mind ponders these pictures, my heart is pulsing with Love, Life, and a Joy that cannot be explained.\u00a0 And I wonder… how can what we are searching so earnestly for be so simple, so available to us, yet be so hard to find? \u00a0I think of how Jesus came, swaddled in humility from the day of His birth.\u00a0 I think of how He walked among men and women, quietly, no big ado, just love… forgiveness… healing… a tenderness beyond what any of us realize.\u00a0 I think of how He was so often silent, but He was God. I think of how He faced the eager religious leaders with sobriety, how He understood their human tendency to see only what was on the outside, and not the heart.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet He could not condone this, for He looked on the hearts of men.\u00a0 I think of how Jesus received the blessings and worship from sinners, and forgave them.\u00a0 I think of how He ate with the publicans and the harlots, loving them, but never touched by their sin.\u00a0 I think of how He healed the sick, cast out demons… how He expounded the kingdom of God to His disciples in parables, so they could understand.\u00a0 And then, what suffering He endured, cruel accusations, and revilings He was unworthy of.\u00a0 He took it silently, for us, because He loved us.\u00a0 He died. He resurrected!!
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\nThat Jesus Christ has made it possible for Himself to dwell within us, to change us into His image, by the Spirit of God.\u00a0 It is Him that we are reaching for!\u00a0 We are yearning for Him.\u00a0 We are seeking Him.\u00a0 He is the LIFE, the LOVE, the FORGIVENESS we all long for.\u00a0 But our hunger for Him will only be satisfied when we choose the path that leads to Him…\u00a0 We need willingness to be buried with baptism in His death and resurrected through His Spirit to LIFE in Christ Jesus.\u00a0 We need willingness to walk in that life, which invariably means death to ourselves.\u00a0 We must accept His will… to be vulnerable and honest before God and man, to not shun the rejection nor fear the misunderstandings of those around us, yes, sometimes those we love the most. We simply must be willing to be like Him, to live like He did.
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\nIt sounds so hard. It sounds so… painful to my heart.\u00a0 But as I feel that deep joy welling up and spilling over the agony of death, my heart says AMEN.
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\n“Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tonight I was lying in bed after PD and I prayed and he\u00a0had fallen asleep.\u00a0 I desperately needed to talk to God.\u00a0 I haven’t been spending the time talking to Him that is so vital to maintain the life inside.\u00a0 As I lay there talking to Him, and felt His love and His grace and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408,"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdweaver.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}