Breathe - Grateful to be the Temple

 This morning I am feeling overwhelmed. 

This is common for me, a nearly everyday occurrence. But I’m starting to find my way through it.

I’m learning to find help - the best help there is. It’s God. 

When I was much younger, God felt very distant. He was somewhere “out there”, and he was watching us and deciding if we were doing a good job of living or not. But he wasn’t close. Oh, how wrong I was!

He’s right here, everyday. He’s closer than my breath. It’s what he promised us, that he would be with us - forever, to the very end. He promised never to leave us or forsake us. The reference for that promise is in the Bible. It can be found in Deuteronomy 31:8. 

When Jesus was getting ready to leave this earth, he promised to ask the Father to send us a Comforter, his Holy Spirit, and he said that the Holy Spirit would never leave us. The Bible also teaches that we human beings are walking temples. Not a stationary building, but a walking, breathing temple for the Holy Spirit to abide in. And he stays with me. He comforts me. He counsels me.

The Holy Spirit is such a perfect Friend!

I’m finding the beginning of my peace today by taking time to feel gratitude, and to count the various wonders and blessings that I can call to mind. And one of those has been gratitude for the friendship of God through the Holy Spirit.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for bringing sensations of peace. Thank you for your tenderness and your actual affection for me. I feel your hug today. I love your grace and the way you help put things in perspective for me. I love how you remind me about the Father’s character and the promises that have been made. 

I love how you are always available, and you never act impatient with me or seem annoyed at how needy I am. You express and communicate delight at being with me and helping me to face life’s challenges everyday. 

You celebrate the victories that I am coming into, and you are always calling me forward into the next challenge, teaching me how to overcome rather than be overcome by everything around me. 

Thank you for being here! Thank you for being completely and totally reliable. Thank you that you see me inside and out - nothing is hidden from you, and yet you still remain and are actively bringing me into a life that is beautiful and reflects your glory and holiness.

I am so grateful!

Ripples

Ideas, efforts and thoughts that start out small, but  have an ever expanding impact

If today….

 If today….

Today I could feel the Lord calling to me to slow down, stop being distracted and come and BE with him. Stop filling up my time with distractions: playing a game, emptying the dishwasher, straightening up, reading messages. Every minute, there are hundreds of distractions that can catch your attention. 

I kept putting it off for a couple more minutes, but every delay was costing me precious time. I have a situation today. Some family connections that are going to happen. They will be good ones, but the Lord wants them to be Spirit ones. That will have a better chance of happening if I am more tuned into the Spirit. I am often not tuned in to the Spirit as much as I could or should be, because I choose too often to live more on the human level than on the Spirit level. Why would anyone choose to do that? Because it’s the path of least resistance. But it’s also the path of least reward.

Connection to the heart of God opens the door to untold riches of understanding, seeing life from heaven’s perspective, revealing of strategies for victory, feelings of comfort and encouragement. But it is so easy to miss. It requires slowing down and directing our minds to peace, to love, to quiet, to truth. It’s a mystery how the soul and the heart communicate with God. He’s right there, every second. We are never apart from Him. He’s not a “force.” He’s a person, but he’s a Spirit. It is beyond natural. It’s the place of tranquility, of inner quieting. It’s the place where things can start to make sense. 

Ever notice how hard the world around us works to grab our attention with diversions, entertainment, information, agitation, irritation, offense, frustration, crushing to-do lists that never go away? Work calls. Family calls. Hobbies call. Games call. Books call. Responsibility calls. Children, pets, needs, troubles, aches and pains, etc. and it goes on and on. But God waits…and he waits …and he waits for us to slow down and stop and COME. 

COME TO ME ALL YOU WHO ARE WEARY AND BURDENED, AND I will give you rest. TAKE MY YOKE UPON you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

That is the call of God to us. A constant invitation to take a break from the craziness of all that is competing for our attention, and grab a moment of quiet. He is the only one who calls us to that. Everyone else wants something from us. But he longs to give himself to us. He is peace, He is love and that is what we find when we come.

If TODAY you hear his voice, harden NOT your heart. 

I can feel that invitation. I can feel that call. And yet…I will resist. My flesh will resist. And thus the instruction of the Word. If today…you hear… HIS voice… When I hear that call, I need to resist the resistance. Because every time I do, I find LIFE!

Getting Started

 I've had this blog name for over a year now, and I have yet to publish anything on here. It's been a quandary for me how to get started, and there are several reasons. This is scary. For a girl, a woman, who all her life has felt hidden, what craziness would possess me to put myself out there? And while hating the sense of diminishment that goes with hiddenness, I have found hiddenness to be a safe place. There's much less chance of criticism here. It's far safer to remain hidden if you have a thinner skin. (Which I do have.)

But who am I kidding? Out there? Who is going to see this? No one but myself even knows it exists.

I'm not a risk taker. Never have been. This blog is a risk, though. I have no idea what I'm doing. I just have thoughts. And like so many others these days, there's a desire to express them somewhere. 

I think that at anytime in history it can be risky to express yourself, but it feels even more so to me in our current hyper sensitized culture. Who  knows what one wrong word, at just the wrong time to just the wrong reading eye could do to your life? But as a child of God, we are not called to “safe”, but to an adventure.

So, first adventure. First entry. Here we go…