My quiet spiritual retreat is coming to a close. I have packed and cleaned the house and just now have been rereading my posts from this week. Today I head back to see my kids - and I am actually even excited to see them again.
Today is also my 39th Birthday. 1 more year before half of my life is over. I never could imagine myself this old. And each time I look in the mirror I am horrified by the lines that are forming there. I wanted so much more from my walk with the Lord by now. I guess I am hard-headed and hard to teach. By the time 40 rolled around I wanted to be trim and fit, and lose all this weight permanently. I wanted to learn to love to exercise. Ha! I do still have a year left!!!
That verse from Proverbs 31 comes to mind ... 'she laughs with no fear of the future'.
I am not what I wish I was. Perhaps I am chasing after the right things with the wrong motives. Nothing on my list is bad - in fact many are good things ... but what do I want them for? I think it is all to make ME more happy. Except none of them will make me happy - except more Jesus - because Jesus is worth knowing and worshipping - not for what I can get from Him - but because knowing Him is LIFE.
I have been fighting the new things that The Lord has brought into my life. My new church, new people, new place, homeschooling ... thinking these things can never bring me what I think I want. But who ever thought death, and being emptied would be easy ... or sought after.... I say I want my flesh to die - but I want it quick and painless. It simply does not work that way.
because I can't end without a Murray quote ... this was good!
“That God may be all in all,” I must not only allow Him to take His place, but secondly, I must accept His will in everything. I must accept His will in every providence. Whether it be a Judas that betrays, or whether it be a Pilate in his indifference, who gives me up to the enemy; whatever the trouble, or temptation, or vexation, or worry, that comes, I must see God in it, and accept it as God’s will to me. Trouble of any sort that comes to me is God’s will for me. It is not God’s will that men should do the wrong, but it is God’s will that they should be in circumstances of trial. There is never a trial that comes to us but it is God’s will for us, and if we learn to see God in it, then we bid it welcome.
BID IT WELCOME... welcoming trials seems like a whole other plane of existence than where I live. But if I want to be refined ... then that is what must happen ... and considering it ALL JOY as it says in James will finally put me in the place I desire to be .... Psalm 27
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
so why should I be afraid?
The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
so why should I tremble?
2 When evil people come to devour me,
when my enemies and foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.
3 Though a mighty army surrounds me,
my heart will not be afraid.
Even if I am attacked,
I will remain confident.
4 The one thing I ask of the Lord—
the thing I seek most—
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
delighting in the Lord’s perfections
and meditating in his Temple.
5 For he will conceal me there when troubles come;
he will hide me in his sanctuary.
He will place me out of reach on a high rock.
6 Then I will hold my head high
above my enemies who surround me.
At his sanctuary I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy,
singing and praising the Lord with music.
David knew the Lord would be there - and that somehow - even if it was bad - He would still be able to worship and delight in the Lord. That is what I want more than anything ... not that trials are gone from my life but that worship and JOY are present in them!!!
I don't see that in me yet ... but I am praying that in the next 40 years of my life I get there.
Happy belated birthday! I wondered how your retreat went. So glad you had such a respite. You know, after reading this I pondered what Moses probably would've said about himself at 39... Because at 40 it came into his heart to do something very good, very noble, and yet, it wasn't the version of his life he imagined... His self-imposed exile chiseled his motives, his approach, and his character. His encounter with 'I AM' was addressing his identity and God's identity. He didn't encounter the burning bush in Egypt, where he grew up-- His swerving dreams met an unswerving God, and I see the parallels of intimacy and aloneness in the backside of your desert as Moses experienced in his desert (actually, way beyond the desert). He was given a new reference point for God's holiness and His presence.
ReplyDeleteGod plucked him out of the activity and the noise of Egypt and placed him in the silence of the open spaces, tending the sheep of his father-in-law, just as you tend the sheep of your children's homeschooling and new life in Florida. Aimee, it's beautiful seeing how you're becoming more intimate with the deep work of humility, empathy, meditation and Jesus-savoring that you can only receive in the silence. He is so interested in addressing the oases and mirages in our desert places.
My prayer is in agreement with you... that you will continue to drink deeply of Him so that your life will genuinely be a spring, bubbling forth in the wilderness through no effort of your own, providing refreshment and bringing forth life to those around you who are parched. Because in the desert, an oasis is clearly seen and sought and so are mirages. Abba is invested in your life NOT being a mirage, promising hope from afar, but a cruel reality when close. I love your prophetic and candid heart, and I'm benefiting from your desert place here in the Sunshine State. Shalom, sistah.