My child, never drift off course from these two goals for your life:
to walk in wisdom and to discover discernment.
Don’t ever forget how they empower you.
For they strengthen you inside and out
and inspire you to do what’s right;
you will be energized and refreshed by the healing they bring.
They give you living hope to guide you,
and not one of life’s tests will cause you to stumble.
(Proverbs 3:21-23 TPT)
Write the vision
Habakkuk 2:2 (NKJV)
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
Grace comes into the soul, as the morning sun into the world; first a dawning; then a light; and at last the sun in his full and excellent brightness.
Thomas Adams
“I leave the gift of peace with you—my peace. Not the kind of fragile peace given by the world, but my perfect peace. Don’t yield to fear or be troubled in your hearts—instead, be courageous!
-Jesus (John 14:27 TPT)
If we are in Christ the whole basis of our goings is God, not conceptions of God, not ideas of God, but God Himself. We do not need any more ideas about God, the world is full of ideas about God. They are all worthless, because the ideas of God in anyone’s head are of no more use than our own ideas. What we need is a real God, not more ideas about Him.
-Oswald Chambers
We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan. (Romans 8:28 NIV)
I’m not a morning person. I never have been. Lately, it’s becoming more difficult to get moving in the morning, but my husband needed me to drive him to an early meeting. On the way home, I impulsively decided to see if my favourite garden was open. It was, by a minute or two. The sun revealed colours I hadn’t seen on the gate before.
“Come away with me,” I heard.
I hadn’t planned to go. In fact, I was grumbling about pushing through the pain to get moving and accommodate another person’s agenda.
I heard the invitation.
I said yes.
It was so beautiful!
Lord, you know everything there is to know about me.
You perceive every movement of my heart and soul,
and you understand my every thought before it even enters my mind.
You are so intimately aware of me, Lord.
You read my heart like an open book
and you know all the words I’m about to speak
before I even start a sentence!
You know every step I will take before my journey even begins.
Psalm 139:1-4 TPT
I took one of those personal trivia quizzes that pop up every once in a while on social media. Yes, I know they are designed to search for data that sells us (the product) to potential advertisers. They might think they know me, but they don’t. Not really.
The test asked about hidden talents. I wrote “invisibility.”
Not long before, I ran into some people I had grown up with. We were either in the same class at school or in the same Sunday School class or youth group for years. One person I had known well and spent time with a couple of times a week for sixteen or seventeen years, couldn’t remember me, although she remembered my cousin with the same surname who had only lived in the same town for two years. Another guy vaguely remembered me as the really quiet girl who was the friend of the really brainy girl. That was at the same school where a teacher insisted to my parents that I wasn’t in his class. When they pointed out my name on the register he said, “Well then, she ought to learn to speak up.”
I have learned to speak up, much to the chagrin of those who complain that now I talk too much. They are right, but my response to that criticism tends to be to want to put on the invisibility cloak of my childhood again and try to content myself with watching life from the shadows like I did before I let God heal the shame that held me there so long. Sitting in the dark singing another chorus of “Nobody Likes Me” is not nearly as uplifting as singing a chorus of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” It’s not a healthy response.
The truth is nobody but God really knows us; we don’t even know ourselves. The search for connection comes from the search for our Creator who knows everything about us and still loves us. He is not disappointed in us because he had no illusions about our state in the first place. It has always been his intention to save us from the messes we have made and the resulting consequences of guilt and shame.
To be known and understood and loved is joy. Without God we are in a constant state of looking to other imperfect people or inanimate things to fill our built-in need for love from someone all-knowing and totally trustworthy, someone who truly knows us, someone who sees the ugliness but moves to bring out the beauty he placed there.
Steffany Gretzinger sings about the joy and hope in being known and loved by Love Himself.
There is something particularly precious about the last flowers in the garden at the end of the season. We know the frost will show up one of these nights.
Sometimes we can sense a change in the atmosphere, a shifting in the angle of light, a different scent in the air. Change is coming.
Change means we eventually may need to let go of the rewards of past efforts, but today we stop and admire the beauty in this moment. Today we thank God for his faithfulness. Today we sing.
Charis: Subject to Change 