Today was an interesting day for me. I started crying for no particular reason on my way to Fareway to get groceries. Now, I know y'all will assume it is part of the grief process, but really it only SORT of is. These tears were different. They weren't sad tears, but a stirring in my heart.
You see God is doing something in me. I don't even understand it all yet. It started months ago. It really doesn't even center around my mother's declining health and death. While that circumstance gives me a huge frame of reference for all that God is doing in my heart, it's only part of it. I don't even know the whole of it. Yet. And I am not sure, what all it means.
I felt throughout the summer that God was preparing my heart for something.
Then September 18th my mother died. "Oh," I thought, "That must really be what He was preparing me for this summer." But last night the stirring began again. He's been using author and daughter of Billy Graham, Anne Graham Lotz to do much of the stirring through her books as well as Ann VosKamp with her book "One Thousand Gifts". Last night I started Anne Graham Lotz book "Magnificent Obsession". Wow.
She describes what I want and cannot put into words. She describes a relationship and "knowing" of God that I long for in my deepest parts.
When I first felt His stirring I decided I wanted to share what he was doing in my heart by leading a women's Bible study. So I did.
As I prepared for lesson four today, I hit Psalm 73 and it hit me back. It wasn't even that I related to what David was going through, but when I got to verse 17 it was exactly what I was feeling. A moment where I "went into the sanctuary of God" and "understood". This lesson stirring in my heart is about the very topic of our Bible study - Eyes on Eternity. The tears began to pour. Not a sad sobbing, but a a flood of tears that wash over with peace and intimacy. I was in His sanctuary and I understood..... this life, it's meant to be lived in the light of eternity.
We all will stand before God Almighty one day. He will know you or He will not. That knowing only comes by a moment in time where you stop and chooses Jesus Christ as Savior. Not through how "good" we are, not how often we go to church, not baptism, not confirmation, not communion, .....none of those things create the "knowing".
Do you know how different the world and life looks when you think of it in light of His eternity?
Do you know what "knowing" Him really means?
Our pastor gave a sermon once on the two kinds of "knowing" - intellectual vs experiential. Do you know him or do you know Him.
I want to know Him. I know Him as Savior, and I want to know Him more.
I have mixed emotions about this stirring He is doing.
It is odd and perplexing to me actually.
But there is no place I would rather be.
Psalm 72-23-28~
:23Nevertheless I am
continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand.
24Thou shalt guide me with thy
counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.
25Whom have I in heaven but
thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
26My flesh and my heart
faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
27For, lo, they that are far
from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring
from thee.
28But
it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord
GOD, that I may declare all thy works."
2 comments:
I am so sorry about your mom! I will be praying for you!
I have to tell you I haven't been doing much blog reading lately, but I saw the beginning of your post when I logged into my blogger account. I was TOUCHED so deeply! I have been feeling this calling from God for a year now! I have been following where He leads me and He is taking me into a deep meaningful, amazing relationship with Him. I just had to tell you this because I felt such a connection to what you wrote. Thank you so much for sharing you heart, it deeply touched mine!
Praying for you still, Beth, and enjoying your sharing of God's word.
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