Oasis

Matthew 11:28 (Amplified Bible)

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]

Garbage, baggage and all ...

I'm busy reading a book by Julia Cameron called "The right to write". I like scribbling down ideas that "speak" to me in terms of where I am or what I'm experiencing in my own life. 

As I was busy doing the scribbling-down-thingie a few days ago I suddenly realised that what Julia is saying about writing is also without doubt true of my relationship with my heavenly Father.

This is what I wrote down:


"Wherever you are is the entry point" - Kabir


"Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start some higher place. Start right where you are" - Julia Cameron

We, as Brad from "the God journey" puts it, are allowed (thanks to Jesus) to bring all our garbage and all of who we are into God's presence and it is there where  
He then, with love and grace,  helps us to sort through it all - the good, the bad and the ugly

I've started believing and doing that 17 years ago and that, for me, has made all the difference

God is good!

A

Enjoying Him

A while back I (again) read the story of Martha doing, and Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. But this time  a question popped up: "Do you not think that Mary would have jumped up to do whatever Jesus asked her to do the moment He asked her to do it?" And I knew that she would have. She loved Him. She would have done anything for Him. And she would have done it with joy (unlike Martha complaining about all the things that she "had to do").  

I ended my quiet time that morning with the prayer: "I want to stay a Mary, one that sits at your feet, living loved but ever ready to follow where you lead"

The next morning, in that space between sleep and waking up, another question was planted. I knew that it was linked to Martha and Mary. In the dark I quickly wrote the question down at the back of my journal and then went back to sleep.

A week later, not feeling on top of the world, I asked God to shine His light and truth into the dark places and reveal to me the secrets of my troubled heart. Without thinking about it, I turned to the back of my journal. And there was the question that I wrote down in the dark, a week ago...

"Can you just enjoy being around God, without wanting to DO something FOR HIM?" 

...and at the moment of reading this I realised that this was also the thought that was going through my mind just as I was turning to the back of my journal. (The Spirit wanted to make sure I get this one)

Can I just enjoy being around God without wanting to do something for Him?  I had to answer no. That was exactly my struggle. I was in a space of not being able to just BE with Him. Because I was ever ready to do, I wasn't enjoying the relationship. I turned into a Marthy (And a bunch of the being-ever-ready was about me but I will share more about that in another blog posting) I just prayed that God will again bring me to a place where I am not focused on what I can do for Him, but where I'm able to JUST BE with Him...

the way He enjoys JUST BEING with me ... 

Love you Father!

A 

This blog thing is hard!

This blog thing is hard for me in so many ways and I think ...no, I know that God is using it to squeeze the orange. Let me clarify.

Someone once got my attention with this. He asked the question: What comes out when you squeeze an orange. The obvious answer is orange juice. He then went on to state that whatever is on the inside comes out when pressured or  squeezed 

...and I am being squeezed by this simple thing of starting a blog. What's on the inside, is coming out. And not all of it is sweet. But as the not-so-sweet juice is coming out, God is so gently dealing with it while guiding me to more freedom in Him. 

I think I will probably be sharing about this in the weeks to come. 

Any one else being squeezed by the situation you are in?

A

 

"So I went to India ..."

No, it's not me that went to India. It's someone, somewhere in the world who wrote an email about her trip to India to someone else somewhere in the world and this someone passed the email on to someone else and that someone else passed it on to another someone else and eventually it reached my inbox. And I want to pass it on to you. Why? Because it is such a great example of that which God was showing me yesterday about being a witness

Isaiah 43: 10 - 12

"You are my witnesses", declared the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me 
and understand  that I am he.
Before me no god was formed
nor will there be one after me
I, even I, am the Lord
and apart from me there is no savior
I have revealed and saved and proclaimed
I, and not some foreign God among you 

You are my witnesses, declares the Lord

that I am God

So here is the girl-who-went-to-India's testimony about a living, relational God meeting her in her mess ...

"So I went to India and thought I was going to help people, learn the language, travel, come back and sound super cool. Then nothing worked out like I thought, nothing. Before I left I was almost at the point of giving up my faith, feeling like there was no relationship. All I knew was that I couldn't look around at the world and think that this all just happened by chance, and Jesus made sense to me. But I didn't understand his love.

A week into India I was so p*&% off, sitting on the roof, so angry that this isn't what I wanted ... thinking that I spend 1500 dollars to sit in a house on the other side of the world. And then, it's like God spoke, in a way - not audibly, just a feeling, I guess - that he brought me there to know his love, freedom and relationship. All these things I was praying for, for a while - I took that semester off to do that but I ignored him again - and He showed me in that moment that He will always pursue me. He will take me across the world to just be alone with Him. Away from all these distractions, make everything I knew disappear, take even language away from me.
When I read through my journal, it's like the psalms. I learned how to let God know that I am mad. And bitter. And I would yell and cry, and read and not understand. Then He would reveal to me, at the height of my madness, of my confusion, that HE only would reveal, proving that HE only can. And it was supernatural. Every time it got into me more and more - His truth. It was the beginning of the foundation I felt I had always missed, the foundation of His love. It totally nullified all the ways I had been taught in church, all the trying, all the guilt. I learned that it wasn't about me controlling things and it was beautiful. I was starting to learn who He really was/is, who He knows Himself to be, not how I knew Him to be. And my heart changed ...it changed cause I was honest and I let go of my agenda, but I didn't pretend that I wasn't mad about it. But it's a fight.

Mostly, I realized I was a mess. I mean, I already knew that, but the most important part was missing. The ending of that is in Romans ... who's going to save me from the mess that I am? How will I be made new? A mess can't save a mess, right? Right. So who can? Thanks be to God, the Lord Jesus Christ!!! He's the One! So, I'm a mess, and I was never supposed to fix myself. I know I suck at it anyway, but before I thought I just failed because I couln't fix myself.
And, I would always have this idea in my head that I would feel differently in another place more fitting to me. I was so bored for such a long time, and discontent. Nothing was going really wrong in my life, circumstantially, but nothing felt worth any kind of push ... I just didn't understand what life was for a while pretending to understand. I felt so plasticky ... it was gross ... ugh, it grossed me out. And I couldn't do it. But, it was no different in India at first. The only time it changed was when He changed my heart. When I felt like FINALLY this relationship was a real thing.

So, really, it was the beginning. And not any kind of beginning I'd ever imagined. But I really believe that if I did everything I wanted to do ... work at an orphanage, help a lot of people, see a lot of places ... I would be just as restless, just as plasticky, just as much discontentment.
The Lord wants you solely, first before any desire to use you for others. And if we don't feel that, any work, any effort is just that - work that is only work, effort that is only effort ... all about us us us, even though we're pretending it's about Him Him Him. But He calls everyone (I really believe) that He wants to use, into a place of truly knowing Him ... and what that means is a knowledge of Love, since that is who He is" 

This is witnessing - testifying about a personal encounter with a living, loving God!

Remember what I said in the first posting?  That my stuggle now is to keep resting in His love while making my life available to others in this way? To not be on a mission to do for God? What the girl-who-went-to-India said in the last paragraph about 

the Lord wanting you and me solely, first before any desire to use us for others 

is exactly what He has been saying to me from even before the struggle in me started. His desire is for me! 

"I belong to my lover and His desire is for me" - Song of Songs 7:10

And from that position of knowing and being in relationship with the God of love, the overflow to others always follows.
 
A