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Lost Correspondence: A Glorious Invitation

Lost Correspondence: A Glorious Invitation

by | Intimacy

God sent me a Grand Invitation. It was to a banquet in my honor. To a table He set with beauty from His pure heart of love, thinking of me.
He was excited as He sent out the invitation. Excited that I would come and we could sit feasting together talking of everything and anything. He yearning to tell me stories I’d never heard. Hoping I would tell Him the dreams I’d never shared before. So He sent me this beautiful invitation covered with His hope and longing and love.

It came to me on a day that was dark. In the middle of a noisy storm. And I, busy closing windows and shutters. Busy listening to the news on how to prepare for what was coming. I, busy crying out in prayer for God to save us from the storm, didn’t even look at the invitation and then forgot all about it.

Until one day I looked up and caught a glimpse of a beautiful corner sticking out from underneath a stack of problems. Curious, I pulled on it. And in wonder at its loveliness, I opened it. The scent of heaven’s flowers came rolling out as I tugged the invitation out from the envelope. I felt the longing of Jesus’ love for me surround me. I felt His sincere desire that I come to the feast He laid for me. He was waiting every morning for me to arrive. Morning after morning had gone by while He faithfully waited.

The day I finally showed up began a joyous conversation with the creator and designer of everything. The One who knows me most yet still loves me best. The food He offered tasted like nothing I’d ever had before. I savored it and pondered looking into Jesus’ face, into His laughing eyes as He waited to hear what I would say.

We talked about so many things. I would ask a question then He would begin a conversation about something completely different. His words filled me inside. In places I didn’t know were empty. I had a glorious morning with Jesus. He didn’t even mention the current storm. He didn’t even seem to notice that it was there. Being with Him was so absorbing I didn’t notice it either. And as I turned to go back to my day, I heard Him speak with such longing in His voice. He said two things that didn’t seem to fit together, yet I knew they were both true. And they’ve changed my life.

He said, “Take me with you as you go—I never leave you.” And then He spoke the invitation, “I’ll be waiting for you right here. Come back in the morning and we’ll feast again.”

And now in the midst of the turmoil, I don’t really see a storm. It appears as a blip in time and space where the cosmos goes on forever. Where the majesty of God is so compelling I cannot look away to bother seeing what noisy thing is behind me.

His love for me, for each one of us is complete and all we need. He has come issuing a grand, glorious invitation to come close, closer than we’ve ever been. He is longing for our presence. He is waiting.

 

Psalms 27:8
My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.”
And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”

 First Love Kari Jobe

The Random Dangerous People

The Random Dangerous People

by | Relationships

I have often thought I should wear a button that says, “Does not play well with others,” just to warn people there’s a cranky introvert coming their way. It’s not that I don’t want to play well, it’s just that I don’t see how to and when I do, it feels a bit like chasing a moving target. People have always been an enigma to me. Random. Dangerous. Like they will reach right out and thump you for apparently no good reason. My experience has been they will easily abandon you in the middle of a journey, in an unknown land, where you came at their invitation and expected to go on with them. They will walk off without looking back. They will call themselves a friend, but walk away during the first storm.

I do it too. I am doing it right now. Walking away from the messy struggle that is in nearly every family relationship I have. Spiritual family, too. Perhaps it is the family tie that brings an added challenge. Maybe I expect more from the people I think should love me. Even saying, ‘should love me,” proves my point.

I see how we must be a messy bunch for Jesus, too. How does He love perfectly and keep loving when we are, when I am, so elusive, capricious or erratic?

Focus matters. In the midst of my relationship anxiety, He comes to remind me to worship, to seek, to stop looking at what is or is not in someone else. To stop reaching for perfect love from people and look to Him, the source, the one true lover of my soul. And the one true lover of their souls, too. He cares for us so much. It’s bewildering to recognize the value He places on us.

He calls me again to seek, to wait, to pour out that which troubles me and rest with Him. He calls me to come and talk about the good things in my friends and Christian siblings. To talk about the gifts they have and the truth they are learning. He speaks to me of the unique expression of His beauty that is in them. He speaks of not touching, but handling gently, the work He is doing in their hearts as I contemplate just walking up and thumping them for what I don’t like, for what hurts me. …And I see I am one of them, the dangerous, random people that I can’t get along with. Sigh. The path of healing and life sometimes goes in a circle leading me back to my own heart.

Thoughts on Speaking

Thoughts on Speaking

by | Growing

Speaking the truth in love. The truth, as God sees it, is that you are the righteousness of Christ. You are Jesus in the earth. You are the beloved. Jesus spoke love to the sinner, spoke deliverance, ministered healing, forgave sins and then said, “go and sin no more.”

He spoke to them of His love and freedom. And, really, when faced with unconditional love, which is the one thing we all crave in life, they came and followed him. How could we not?

God says all His thoughts toward us are good. You cannot look upon the face of Jesus and walk away the same. We are not here to judge others, but only to love them. So speaking the truth in love is to call each other the righteousness of Christ. It’s recognizing the beloved of God in the people we meet and speaking those words of truth to them. Knowing I am loved makes it a bit easier to go and love others.

Eph 4:15
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
2 Cor 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

1 John 4:15-17
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.