In His Lap

Most mornings Caleb comes downstairs at 7, finds me on the couch as I finish up my time with the Lord, and climbs on my lap. He will sit and snuggle for as long as possible, soaking in the time with Mom. He looks up at me, gazing into my face, gives me hugs and kisses and gets his fill for the day. Then he goes off and is in constant motion for the rest of the day, on grand adventures or designing new inventions like his anti-gravity machine.

As I was praying this morning, I really got the sense that this is exactly what God wants me to do with Him in the mornings, to sit in His lap, rest in His embrace and get the charge I need to go out and do the tasks He has called me to do for the day.

I was brought yet again to the account of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. Martha was distracted by serving. I can get so distracted by serving or more often, by daily tasks that overtake my focus. (Or like now, by the preparations to begin homeschooling next week.) Mary chose to sit at Jesus feet and hear His Word. She chose the one thing that was needed. May I do the same.

Jesus, here I am. I want to sit in Your lap this morning. Refresh me. Holy Spirit, come. Give me a sense of who I am in You, a sense of being loved. Fill me with a sense of security, a confidence that it is all in Your hands, I just need to continue to abide with You, following where You lead.

Amen.

Relationships Are Worth It

The Lord has really been revealing Himself to me this weekend, especially with the big change in our home as of yesterday. My step-son, his wife and their baby lived with us for 10 1/2 months and just got in a moving van and are heading for college in the mid-west. I am not going to lie and say that it has been easy sharing a small house with three extra people, but it has been really good.
He is teaching me that relationships are worth it. They are worth the work and the lack of control they bring into your life. When you are engaging with others, it won't always turn out the way you expected. I am learning that is okay, actually I am finding that when I leave things in God's hands, they turn out better than if I had orchestrated the situation on my own. God works out the details. By not being intentional or putting in the effort (or because I am uncomfortable or don't want to risk "rejection") I often don't make the attempt to connect with others as much as I could.
Lord, help me in this area. I want to take more risks for the sake of relationships. Keep shifting my perspective back in line with Yours, Lord I want to love people like you do, not as Heidi finds easiest. Move in me.

I Decided to Come Back to Blogging

It has been a year since I last blogged. Summer seems to be the time when I actually have enough extra time to consider blogging. Here I am again deciding to give it another try.

In my morning quiet times I write my prayers in a journal. If I don't I can't seem to stay focused, and I also like being able to go back and reread them as an encouragement. Recently I have been going back through them and compiling the times when God intervened in our lives, when we felt Him speak to us, or when someone else felt God speaking to them for us. I have really been enjoying going back through these notebooks. There is so much good stuff there. It is also really helpful to see how far we have come in even just the last two years (I am currently rereading in 2007).

This morning I found this entry in my journal:

Pray, Praise & Pause before Him
not Perform

Pray that you may be one with Him
Praise who He is - focus ablsolutely on Him,
not on your circumstances
Praise and the chains will be broken
Pause and soak in His presence - allow Him to bring you
back into intimate fellowship with Him.

It kind of goes along with the Oswald Chambers (My Utmost For His Highest) devotion for today regarding 'His Purposes or Ours?'

Here is the text of that devotion:
We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success. We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not. The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.
What is my vision of God’s purpose for me? Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish— His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see "Him walking on the sea" with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see "Him walking on the sea" ( Mark 6:49 ). It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God.
God’s training is for now, not later. His purpose is for this very minute, not for sometime in the future. We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience, and we are wrong to concern ourselves with it. What people call preparation, God sees as the goal itself.
God’s purpose is to enable me to see that He can walk on the storms of my life right now. If we have a further goal in mind, we are not paying enough attention to the present time. However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.

This is where Vince and I are at right now, living in the moment connected to Him. We feel that He has called us to do something new. We feel that He has confirmed a name for that work, the Prodigal Church. We sense that we will be working mostly with people who have been hurt by the church or who are unlikely candidates for fitting in to the current church model. We desire to love on people, BEING church more than DOING church. But other than that, we don't know much. Our desire is to follow Him each day, going where He leads. This devotion confirmed for me that we are indeed going in the right direction- taking steps as He illuminates them, not worried about what the future will look like.