I’d like you to meet someone…

His name is Marvin and he is 6 years old.  I met him this past summer.  He lives in La Limonada, the ghetto, in Guatemala City. We went to watch the soccer match there in the ghetto.. a team sponsored by Hope Renewed International. Ashley told us that the only requirement to be on the team was that you had to be a gangster. That is her heart- gangsters. Marvin’s dad is on the team- number 19. As our group was sitting on the ground watching the game, Ashley brought Marvin over to me and he gave me a big hug and sat right down on my lap. He did not speak English… I did not speak Spanish. We sat together wordlessly for a while, only exchanging smiles and laughter. Then we played a game of clapping which soon turned into a counting game. He reminded me of how to count to 20 in Spanish, then he counted at lightning speed to somewhere well over 20. He lost me there. Marvin was fascinated by my camera and took several photos. He taught me the word for cross in Spanish- ‘cruz’- and took a fabulous picture of the cross around my wrist. His smile won my heart. Such a proper introduction to the people of La Limonada, Guatemala City.

The Furious Longing of God

“The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian.”

― Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing of God

“O Lord, be gracious to us; we long for You. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress.”  ~Isaiah 33:2

 

This will be written in Sharpie on my mirror before I go to bed tonight.  I want to read these words out loud every morning and every night.

 

Yes and amen.  :)

Stop the World

 

 

“If this is a storm……then rest in Me.”

(I rediscovered this post from one of my old blogs tonight… and I had all but forgotten this lesson… so… I am reposting a few years later…)

 

“If this is a storm……then rest in Me.”

 

So, one day this week I lost something very important. It was a check for several hundred dollars. Now, I’m not one to be all about money- gotta have it, gotta have it!- but I have a semi-tight budget and there is simply NO room for several hundred dollars to go missing.

 

I knew where I had left it- and it wasn’t there. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere. Normally I could have said- ok, Wendy- it didn’t sprout legs and walk away- it’s here. Just find it. That would be my normal thought process. But the day before, we came home to an open back door. Now that door is normally a pain because it doesn’t like to close well sometimes, so I didn’t think anything of it when I saw it cracked. I made a mental note to always double check it when we leave, but then I put it our of my mind.

 

Until the check was missing.

 

So now, it’s missing and there is the smallest- slightest possibility that someone could have come in the door and taken it. It was in plain view, lying on the couch with some other mail. The other mail was there- but the check was gone. My mind raced. Everything else was still here- nothing was taken. But in my mind there was the possibility, and that was enough- I began to slowly panic.

 

I prayed about it- a desperate prayer. Again- it’s not that I wanted the money- it’s that the money is already allocated to pay the bills, and that’s a shaky feeling.

 

So, I searched my car, my room, my kitchen, the living room, the couch, went through trash bags 3 times, cried, then searched some more. I think I looked in and under the couch 4 times at least. Then I locked myself out of the house to see if I could get in the back door with a knife- which I failed at.

 

Then I prayed some more. I told the Lord that I trusted Him to get us through this month- just show me if the check was really gone. That way I knew if someone had been in the house and if I needed to call a certain someone and tell them to stop payment on the check. But that would have made that certain someone mad and they wouldn’t have been very nice, so I didn’t want to do that. However- I felt helpless- I couldn’t find that check. And I needed to find it.

 

So, I prayed again and I repented because I say a lot how much I trust the Lord. And I do- I trust Him. He’s brought us sooooo far- HE brought us. Not me. And He has always come through for me. But I repented because I was panicking over a few hundred dollars. To me that’s a lot, but to Him, it’s a drop in the bucket- and it’s not that big of a deal. So I repented and I asked God to change my way of thinking- to help me trust Him more.

 

So- I’m crying, repenting, and still wondering where the check was and whether or not someone came in and took it.

 

And the Lord asked me this question- “Is this a storm?” and I said- “yes! I mean if it’s not one, it really feels like one, and to me it is one. This is a storm to me- yes, yes. I’d say this is a storm.”

 

So, very quietly, the Lord said, “Then find my rest.”

 

And for a few moments I was speechless. I didn’t know how. I felt like the last thing I could do right now was to rest. I had to find that check!!! But the Lord said to find His rest. I thought it was interesting that He said to ‘find’ His rest. Since I was searching already…. I guess I was just searching for the wrong thing.

 

Ok- so I tried to figure out what He meant. how do you ‘find’ His rest. How do you rest when things are shaky? you have to put your faith in Him. And that’s what I had to do. I had to let go of trying to find the check and be obedient. And it felt like it was going to kill me.

 

I went to my favorite spot on the couch and reclined (the couch has a recliner at both ends). And I prayed- Lord I trust in You. I don’t know how to do this- but I trust in you. I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on You.

 

And so I laid there with my eyes shut, and all of a sudden I remembered laying there the day or so before and Morgan cuddling up with me- and I looked down- when the recliner is opened up, you can sort of see down to the floor through the couch.

 

And what did I see- the very tiny corner of a check. The check.

 

Now I had looked under the couch already- from the front and from the back- but where it was, you could only see it from one angle- through the recliner. I crawled under the open foot rest of the recliner and I got the check and when I did, I laid there and cried. Tears of joy and tears of relief, and tears of happiness- yes I was happy because I found the check- but I was overwhelmed by the lesson the Lord just taught me. A very practical lesson, indeed.

 

Had I not rested in the recliner, I would not have been in the position to see the check.

 

Isaiah 30:15 says this: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength.” Om- hello- I just got first-hand experience in this. I think that we can only truly rest when we know that our lives are held by the Lord. There’s a Hebrew word translated as ‘trust’ which means to lean on- and you can’t lean on something that won’t support you, right? When you sit in a chair you put your trust in that chair that it will support you and not let you fall. And so you don’t lean on something unless you know it will hold you up- so we put our trust in Him because we are confident that He will hold us. Trusting in Him is a confident expectation, not a constant anxiety. But many of us never fully trust Him. We still stress over what ifs and what fors. We’re always trying to take the reins back from Him and do it our way. We become worried and panicked over things like lost checks…

 

But God says, “If this is a storm- rest in Me.” and when we do, He sees us through every time.

 

In all my searching, I was frantic to find something that could only be found by stopping and resting in Him. But what I needed more than anything was to find his rest.

 

I pray that I am constantly searching for more of Him and for more of His rest.

 

I pray that when the storms of life come- and they will come- that I am focused on Him, not the storm.

 

I pray that as I lean more fully on Him that I will come to a place where the things of this world grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

 

And I pray that I search for Him and His ways as hard and as desperately as I searched for that check. And that when I find Him, I will not let go of Him. When I find Him, I will hold him close and not let go. (Song of Solomon 3)

 

If this is a storm, then rest in Him. It is the only thing that will put you in position to conquer that storm and speak peace to it.

Nouwen Quotes I Love

“For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.”

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing – not healing, not curing – that is a friend who cares.”

“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”

“It is not easy to stay with your loneliness. …. But when you can acknowledge your loneliness in a safe, contained place, you make your pain available for God’s healing. God does not want your loneliness; God wants to touch you in a way that permanently fulfills your deepest need. It is important that you dare to stay with your pain and allow it to be there. You have to own your loneliness and trust that it will not always be there. The pain you suffer now is meant to put you in touch with the place where you most need healing, your very heart….Dare to stay with your pain, and trust in God’s promise to you.”

-Henri Nouwen

summer

You know it’s summer when you stay up past 1 in the morning making friendship bracelets with your 10 year old……. Ahhh…. This is the stuff memories are made of….. Now off to Hushabye Mountain….

A Wise Father

God wants to fulfill the desires of our hearts. But like any wise Father He will not do what we ask if it would destroy us. Yet many of those desires are good, but we lack the character for the blessing to actually add quality to our lives. Thus the purpose of discipline: God disciplines us so we can survive His blessings. ~ Pastor Bill Johnson

How much do I really want?

“Before we can be filled with the Spirit the desire to be filled must be all consuming…The degree of fullness in any life accords perfectly with the intensity of true desire. We have as much of God as we actually want.”~A. W. Tozer

Ouch. I want more. I want to be completely consumed with desire for Him. I don’t want to be distracted by life or doing doing doing anymore. It’s time to take some serious stock and get some things in order. SO thankful He is longsuffering and patient with me.

Extravagant Desire

2 Chronicles 7:14- If my people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves, pray, seek, crave, and require of necessity My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. AMP

Did you catch that word ‘crave’ in there? I’ve read this verse many, many times, but the Amplified Bible just has a way of speaking ‘louder’ sometimes. In church one Sunday morning, the pastor used this verse as part of his sermon, and as I read it, I was caught by the words: “seek, crave, and require of necessity My face.” I’m not altogether sure what else the pastor said that day. I don’t think I heard another word. My heart had been gripped and I was in agony. It hit me that morning that at some recent time in my life I had stopped ‘craving’ His face. I had stopped requiring Him as an absolute necessity in my life- as the air in my lungs, as the very beat of my heart. And right then that morning, I was heartbroken. It wasn’t because I had decided He wasn’t worth my devotion and desire. It wasn’t because I didn’t love Him with my whole heart. It was simply because I had let my desire for Him grow cold due to the busyness of life. I had curled up in the lap of complacency where I was lulled to sleep by the honeyed charm of self-satisfaction. That morning, I was shaken from my slumber. That morning I took a good hard look at my heart. That morning I renewed my vow to seek the Lord with all of my heart, with everything I have, with all I am.

God is passionately in love with you. He created you simply because He wanted you. He wanted you to come to Him, to fellowship with Him, to talk to Him, just to simply ‘be’ with Him. He wants more than people who just do what He says, more than people who just like what He likes, more than people who just call to Him from a distance and speak often of Him. He wants a love relationship with you. He wants you to know Him intimately, intensely… not lethargically, not lukewarm. Have you ever been in love? Truly in love? It’s intense. It’s fierce. It’s passionate. It’s a burning desire to be with the one you love… just to sit in their presence and do anything or nothing at all. It’s an absolute abandoning of your own agenda, just to see the one you love smile.

God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities.
He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.
A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God

Ours should be the same request as that of Moses in Exodus 33:18: “And Moses said, I beseech You, show me Your glory.” Moses was described in Numbers 12:3 as “very meek (gentle, kind, and humble) above all the men on the face of the earth,” yet he was very bold in his request of God. He didn’t want a little taste of God. He didn’t want just a surface relationship with God. He wasn’t content to just sit at the foot of the mountain. Moses wanted to see God’s glory- to come into His very presence and know His very being. And God was more than happy to grant his request. God’s heart is always drawn by the hungry hearts of His people who desire nothing more than Him. He is simply waiting for us to decide that He’s all we want so that He can make all of His glory pass before us and become all we need. Our highest endeavor in life should be to love God, glorify Him, and take extravagant delight in Him. Only then will we be able to experience the life He created us to enjoy.

Do you desire God above anything else? Do you crave His face?

Is His presence a necessity that you require in order to live?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’ or ‘not really,’ take steps today to fix it. The Kingdom of God has been called an ‘upside down kingdom.’ Things seem backwards at times. If you want to be first, you must be last. If you want to live, you must first die. If you want to receive, you must give. And if you aren’t hungering for God, if you don’t desire Him extravagantly, you must feed yourself on His Word and His presence. Ask God today to fill your heart with a passionate love and desire for Him. Ask Him to show you His glory. He will. He is faithful to His Word.

Psalm 145:18- The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him sincerely and in truth. AMP