Dear Sister,
I have not written here for so long. The reasons are varied for my reluctance to write about spiritual things. For the most part, I have been walking through something that has truly humbled me on so many levels. God is showing me my humanity and great great need for him. He has stripped away so much of what I thought my life would be like and left me with the reality of what it means to give your life to him. I am reminded that giving your life to God means you relinquish control and mastery. He is the Master, the Architect, and the Potter while I am the clay being shaped and molded. Can I be honest? I don’t like the way this feels. It isn’t normal for me to read my bible in the morning. Being a morning thinker isn’t natural for me. What is natural for me in the morning is to warm up slowly by being contemplative. So, think nothing of the fact that I have my bible open, it is really more like a white flag to the Holy Spirit. When you are broken up what do you do but surrender? I opened up to one of the gospels and read a familiar text. I’m sitting in front of my computer with my headphones on listening to music. My coffee cup is sitting to my right and the light and cool air from my open sliding glass door is streaming in behind it. The coffee was hot enough to let off steam and the light and cool air made the mist of the rising steam visible. I sat and took in the beauty of the swirling steam rising up, dancing with joy, and then disappearing. Over and over this dance of steam streamed along. I was just sitting and enjoying the moment. Then what came to mind was this Bible verse: “James 4:14 ‘You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” For a gal who was just musing about feeling not valued in a specific area of her life this was sobering. I’m just here for a little while and then I will be gone. What do you do with that? My conclusion is to lean on the bible verse (the later part of it) : Galatians 5:6 “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” A tall task for life. This is what I must hold onto as my purpose: faith (in Jesus) and love (for God and others). Something that I love has been put on pause and I feel the sting of it. I’m going to try and put it in God’s hands and have faith that he will handle it. If my life is a mist and in God’s hands, I must conclude that it is to be used by me for his glory and not my own. That is a hard pill to swallow and one I will have to take like a daily vitamin! It’s like a horse size pill. :0/ Last night I was having a prayer of surrender. To many things in my life feel so off kilter. (Too personal to share really with anyone). During my prayer it felt to me like nothing made good sense. Instead of asking God to do this and that I sometimes (not all times) come to a place of a prayer like this: “Ok God. You are love and righteous and right in all things. Here is my stuff (I’m imagining a wicker basket with dirt, rocks, worms, weeds, flowers, and a closed up rose and a gum wrapper crumbled up and a hand glove. I’m taking that basket full of mess and sitting it at the feet of Jesus.) It is not an easy task to surrender to God. I’m such a take-care-of-it-myself sort of person, but God is forever showing me that I’m not meant to go it alone. He wants me to continually take things to Him. That is hard for me. After praying, while in my long bathtub soak, I went to bed. I so often power through my day and forget to stop and read my bible until bedtime. I did listen to a sermon but that wasn’t enough for today. Once securely under the covers, I came to a familiar part of the bible, the gospels. Here is the verse that jumped out at me in a way that it never did before: John 13:7 “Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ The context of the verse was that Jesus was washing the disciples' feet at the last supper, but this time when I read it, I felt like it was exactly what Jesus was saying to me. I felt safe in His hands. I want to share with you that something someone said was a huge catalyst to bringing me toward this attempt at surrender. This person has no idea that I heard their words and the impact they had on me. Their words corrected part of my misalignment in thinking. Believer, watch your words, they could minister to someone in a powerful way and you will never know how amazingly fitting God has used them. With that thought about words being powerful, I will release my words here. I wanted to create devotions that were more like a bible study, that was my original plan. I may still do that from time to time. Right now, all I can do is write in a way that is expressive like I would do in a letter to a sister who lives far away. I have discovered in the last eight months of my life how important writing is to me. A longer than a short story, but not a novel, has come to me. I’m working on getting it out of my head and into words. Just a few days ago I wrote a short story, and it was so wonderful to put it together. So, I’m leaning into the proverbial wind and letting my writing flow here too, but in a more informal than I had planned manner. Please embrace every typo, misspelled word, and not so great sentence structure that you may encounter. I am a work in progress that is doing life just as imperfectly as everyone else. I trust that we are friends here. Please read every letter in love. My now lesson in life is that when you give your life to God you don't have control, it won't be what you thought it was going to be, go to him over and over again with your stuff and ask him to be super involved, he is working in ways that won't make sense right now but later you may understand, you are here for such a short time, walk in faith with Jesus and live in love to God and man. Blessings, Deanne Proverbs 3:5&6
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AuthorI'm a woman who has the spirit of the teenage girl I once was and that is why I love life, people, and being silly and laughing. I can be mature and grown-up, but it isn't my default setting, more like life's program. The color of my spirit is Hot Pink, and the color of my soul is Teal. Dark chocolate is a health food and I believe there is food for the body and then there is food for the soul. Eat responsibly and enjoy the treats. These devotions are from the heart and meant to help me think and share. I hope that these devotions will be a health food to your soul as well. Archives
August 2024
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