12 | Be Loved

Our senior pastor, John Hogenson, recently said this to our congregation at the annual stewardship dinner.

"I love you.  And I want the very best for you."

It is a personal and powerful message, one that has echoed in my heart for several weeks now.  It is a message that surprised me, in part because Pastor Hogenson's been with our very large church for a only a few short months.  How can he know me enough to love me?  Yet I do not doubt his sincerity.  He exudes God's love in all that he says and does.  

"I love you.  And I want the very best for you."

It is a message that reminds me of how earnestly God loves me.  In every book of the Bible we can find this message from God.  He has created us for an eternity of his love, and he wants us to experience that love fully, abundantly, completely.

"I love you.  And I want the very best for you."

Our God is a loving God.  

In this culture that places conditions and limitations and expectations of love, we sometimes have difficulty embracing the breadth and depth of God's infinite love. We sometimes doubt that in our unworthiness and imperfection, we could truly be loved unconditionally and eternally.  

Really God, you love me?  With all my bumps and blemishes and warts and worries? 

And God answers, simply and sincerely: YES.  Totally. Completely.  Forevermore.

God wrote out his love for us in every book of the Bible.  Today let's be still in some snippets of God's greatest love letter to us all.  Let's rejoice in this amazing gift.

My precious child, 

I want you to know that I love you.  I want you to really know that truth, deep in your heart.  And I want you to carry it with you all of your days — the dark and stormy ones, the bright and joyful ones, and every day in between.

Juliet Grace Design via Etsy.com

My love for you existed even before I created you.  In my love I created you in my image.  I bestowed upon you special gifts, uniquely designed just for you.  You are exactly who I want you to be.  I want to abide in you, reside in your heart, live brightly in your life. 

via Pinterest

My love for you knows no end.  It will carry you to — and through — eternity.  And with this unending love I grant new mercies and blessings upon you, day after day after day.  Are you starting to understand?  My love for you is permanent.

king090blog.wordpress.com

My love for you is so large and so wide and so deep that it has no limits.  None.  Not one.  I created this entire world, and with the same care I created you.  I cradle the whole world in my hands, and I stretch out my hand to help you every day.  Some days you may feel like you are wandering or lost, but I always know where you are.  I always remember that you are my beloved child.  I want you to remember that, too.

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8

My love for you is so sincere that I want the very best for you, for always.  And to that end I gave up my son for your salvation.  Don't stop to think about being unworthy of this sacrifice.  My love defies that kind of logic.  You have worth because I love you.  This salvation is grace. Pure gift.  No strings attached.  Yours.  Forever.  Please don't keep this gift wrapped up and pretty on the shelf.  Take it down, open it up, use it.  Live in this love and live it out loud.  I want you to rejoice in this gift.  It is the very best, from me, for you.

www.HollyLaneDesigns.com

My love for you is so close that nothing can ever separate you from my love.  Not your distractions, your anger, your self-doubt, and definitely not your sins.  I have given it to you and nothing can ever steal it away.  My love is here for you every time you close your eyes, whisper a prayer, sing your praises, or serve those in need. There is no expiration date or supply shortage to worry about.  Use it up, pour it out. There will always be more.  I promise.

I love you so much.  I want the very best for you.

I want to give you a moment of stillness to soak up my love.

Breathe in this stillness.  Breathe in my love.

Be still.  Be loved.

With all my love and affection,

Your Father in Heaven

7 | Surrendering in the Stillness

After I published yesterday's piece about "When Being Still Is Hard," it got a lot harder.

I set out on an easy three-mile run.  (I've learned over the years that the weekly or bi-weekly short run is all my body can take.)  Just as I'm coasting into that two-mile autopilot, no-effort mode, it happened.

Uneven sidewalk.  Lunging dog.  Tight hamstring.  Tear.  Treacherous tumble.

Twenty minutes of praise-filled prayer, of lead-me-Lord listening, torn out from under me.  Flat on my fanny, I pulled out my phone to call for a ride.  The spiraling dots were dialing down to a dead battery.

Talk about feeling disconnected.  Nevermind the fact that this week I have no access to either of my work emails from two different organizations for mysterious, Poltergeisty reasons.  Nevermind that the two aged laptops we own are wheezing and freezing, and the wifi needs unplugging and replugging on a daily basis. Disconnected.  Minding the gaps — physical, technological, social — minding them very much, indeed.

The mile walk home was a downward spiral from "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" to a bitter pity party.  My spiritual battery was dying, too.  I was mad at God for the recent sequence of events on top of years of problematic patterns.  All the wounded disconnections stormed up into a cold silence by the time I walked the last blocks home.  "I can do all things" subsided to a whimpering "why even try?"

That whole mile I wanted to by physically still, but I needed to get home.  That whole afternoon I wanted to deliver a spiritual silent treatment to God, not enjoy any spiritual stillness.  But God kept pointing me to his home of love and grace.

Geri Madera Photography

Fastforward four hours to the MRI lab.  Thirty-six minutes of forced stillness. Preceded by worries about potential surgery and twitching legs and loud robotic bleats and bursts.  Yet those thirty-six minutes turned out to be pure gift.  Pure gift of prayer that went from self-pity to petitions for friends who are in much more dire straits than myself.  I became engrossed in lifting up Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and throat cysts and deep grief and cancerous brain spots.  Amidst the robotic machinations of the MRI, my prayers melted from robotic supplications to heartfelt lifting of friends on pallets, lowering them through the roof to Jesus' healing presence.  My prayers melted from "Why me?" to "Can you?" to "You promise, and I believe."

Confession: I don't normally pray with that kind of passion and trust.

I don't know how to do it without feeling skeptical or just plain weird.  But I do know it happened yesterday, by the grace of God.  Literally.  In the moment where I surrendered my worries, accepted my current state, and whispered (without moving a muscle) for help, God entered my prayers and filled them with all the faith I didn't have.  It was a stillness that was situationally forced and spiritually freeing.  All I had to do was let go.  That, and fall in a clumsy, crazy, contorted way.

ibibleverses.christianpost.com

Interpretation:  God is still working in me to get better at this Being Still thing.

Just when I think I've figured out what he wants me to do, to say, to share, God brings me back to doing things in his time and in his way.  Being still is not for me to think my way through, to figure out on my own.  It's not just, as I wrote yesterday, me inviting God into my moment of slow.  Being still is God's invitation for me to come to a full stop — to trust and to surrender, so he can fill and overflow.  Because what God brings to the stillness is so much more powerful than anything I can ever offer.

Philippians 2:13 from VersifyLife.com

And with that, I'm going to just shut up for today.  But not before I leave you with this prayer.

Lord,  

My ideas for what is possible in my relationship with you are so humanly limited.  

I pray that you blow wide open the realm of possibility for our time together.  Where I seek space, I ask you to create your own peaceful dwelling place.  Where I seek silence, I ask you to fill it with your living word.  Where I seek sanctuary in the midst of busy, I ask you to make my business all about being a living, breathing, walking, talking sanctuary that glorifies you.   

And where I try to keep hold of the reins, I implore you to take them from my controlling clutches, take them under your divine direction, and teach me to surrender to your serenity. 

Amen.