Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young -- February 21

Today's Jesus Calling is perfect:

Trust and thankfulness will get you safely through this day. Trust protects you from worrying and obsessing. Thankfulness keeps you from criticizing and complaining: those "sister sins" that so easily entangle you.

Keeping your eyes on Me is the same thing as trusting Me. It is a free choice that you must make thousands of times daily. The more you choose to trust Me, the easier it becomes. Thought patterns of trust become etched into your brain. Relegate troubles to the periphery of your mind, so that I can be central in your thoughts. Thus you focus on Me, entrusting your concerns into My care.

Colossians 2:6-7; Psalm 141:8; I Peter 5:7

I have needed His safety getting through this day. There have been all kinds of pitfalls. Worry and obsessing, criticizing and complaining, have been part of the fabric of me the last several days. Whew! I'm so glad He called me on it.

What great words: "The more you choose to trust Me, the easier it becomes. Thought patterns of trust become etched into your brain." We have to discipline ourselves in order to make the right choice "thousands of times daily." I'm reminded of this passage:

⁷ It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? ⁸ But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. ⁹ Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? ¹⁰ For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. ¹¹ All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

¹² Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, ¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:7-12)

I love that last verse. We make paths for ourselves, whether straight or crooked. Worry and criticism form crooked paths that will put us--our limbs, our minds--out of joint. Trust and thankfulness form straight paths that allow us to heal. Healing is our lifeline till we get to Heaven, where we won't need to be healed anymore. Lord, help me build a pathway of trusting and thanking You from the heart.

Intercession Meditation

I just had a lightbulb moment about intercessory prayer. I'd like to know what the Bible says about it, and what you think about it. :-)

Background: Praying for others usually exhausts me. As with many areas of life, by default I tend to approach intercessory prayer in a very rigid, list-oriented way. However, the "list approach" to prayer tends to disconnect my heart from the subject of the prayer--the person I know and love, whose wellbeing I care about. That is to say, the list approach disengages prayer from its relational component and makes it task-oriented instead.

However, prayer is by default relational--prayer is talking to God. You don't talk with someone unless you mean to communicate with them, and communication is by default relational. Therefore prayer is by default relational. So it's silly to take something as relational as prayer and strip it of its relational element. What are you left with but an empty shell?

Besides, I don't usually pray for myself in a list-oriented way anymore (doing so usually exhausts me...). Instead, I bask and emanate. :-) Before you write me off as completely mystical and loony, let me explain.

To me, God is like the sun. I need His light, I need His presence, I need His warmth, I need His energy, to function properly. If I go for a while without enough of Him, I get SAD--seasonal affective disorder. If He ever left my universe, my life would quickly cease.

Sometimes I take sunshine for granted, but I try to make a point to enjoy and appreciate it--to bask in it. Luxuriate in it. When I bask, my body and mind instinctively respond to the sun--my body relaxes, my mind calms, my skin warms--I may even begin to sweat. What's inside me comes out--figuratively and literally. Stress and anxiety tend to dissipate, emanating out and away from me. Sweat seeps and evaporates. "Emanating," or releasing what's inside me, is a natural and subconscious response to sunshine.

Like I said, to me God is like the sun. And that's why I think "basking and emanating" is a legitimate form of prayer, a legitimate way of relating to Him. I often take Him for granted, but when I'm thinking clearly, I consciously enjoy and appreciate Him. I bask in His presence. And basking leads to emanating--after a little while, what's inside me naturally begins to come out. Sometimes it's words--"Lord, please help this specific situation." "Please help me know You more." "Please show me what I should be thinking about this."

Other times there are no words; it's just Him and me, being--Him being Himself, and me enjoying Him. And I can't necessarily articulate what passes between us, but what's inside me comes out. If I'm worried about something in my life, the anxiety just kind of seeps out of me. It dissipates into the space between us. I know that He sees it and understands it, but I'm spared the trouble of trying to articulate something I don't even fully understand. If I have a distressing situation or confusing problem, the concept of it just kind of emanates out of me into His presence--I don't have to tell Him about the problem. He sees it. I know that He sees it. And we just "be" together, around it. After a while, enough of the problem leaves me, and I get all right.

Which brings me back to praying for others. If I can pray for myself this way, why can't I pray for others this way? Why can't I "bask and emanate" on behalf of people I love? I think I can; we can. I think we can sit in the presence of the Lord, basking in the light of His face... and let our burdens for friends and family seep to the surface of our hearts, dissipate in the warmth of His comforting gaze, and burn off like cloud cover under His pure, cleansing presence. What do you think?

Distilled Devotions

[Stressful situation sinisterly sits, squelching, sucking sense and sanity from my solitude and soirees...] Everything is murky and unclear.

But this I know: 

"Trusting God" is for the days of "normal" and the days of doubt. In fact it is specifically made for days of doubt. And right now I don't know what will happen or exactly what I need to do or how to do it, so I'll call this a day of doubt. 

Worrying is not trusting. I'm commanded to trust. I'm commanded not to worry. And worry, which is sin, burns up tons of energy. And I need to conserve my energy.

God is capable of doing great and mighty things whether I acknowledge Him or not. But He acts where there is faith. He doesn't act where there isn't. In fact, Mark 6:5-6 says,

And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He wondered at their unbelief. (emphasis added) 

So if I want to see God act, I have to believe. There is no other way--continuing to worry instead of starting to trust is like trying over and over to turn on the toaster when it isn't plugged in.

I can't change anybody in this situation, except me. I can't even change me by myself. I am dependent on God to change the broken parts of me, and I am definitely dependent on Him to work in the other actors in this situation. 

To worry about the situation as my course of action is absurd, because nothing I can do will change any one of them.

To trust God with the situation is the one course of action that makes perfect sense, because trust activates God to work... and He is THE ONLY Person who CAN change each one of them and me!

So today I need to stop spinning my wheels--wasting precious time, wasting precious energy--and trust.

How do I practice trusting? By expressing it verbally and mentally. 

Verbally, I express it to the Lord in the hearing of myself, and I express it within my own spirit to myself. :) "I trust You, Lord." "I trust the Lord." Here's a perfect example from my devotional reading for today. Psalm 56:3-4 says,

When I am afraid [or, "In the day I am afraid..."--love that!], I will put my trust in You [or, "I am one who puts..."--good, a change of self-perception!]. In God, whose Word I praise, in God I have put my trust; what can mere man do to me?

Mentally, I express trust by consciously choosing to chew on good content. That is, I need to dwell on God's extreme ability to handle the details of my life, His excellent past record of doing so, and His extreme love for me--instead of allowing my mind to wallow around in the problems I'm concerned about.

Take-aways:

Trust is custom-made for the day of doubt, the day of fear.

I need to express trust to God in the hearing of myself.

I need to keep my mind "out of the gutter" regarding my problems.

Worry is sin that wastes my time and energy and makes God unmotivated to work on my behalf.

Trusting is an act of obedience so pleasing to God that, when He sees it, He is motivated to act on my behalf, because it lifts Him up to His proper place.

Thank You

Thank you, God, for answering my prayers and blessing me with awesome friends. Friends who love and serve You. Friends who understand me. Friends who love me in spite of me. Friends who encourage me. Friends to laugh with. Cry with. Be with.

My Turn!

Exhausted but happy. Life is good!

Back with Another Six-Word Memoir

Ecopaint molded in can. Big bummer.

Windy Winter Afternoon

Why, do you suppose, is it that on a bleak-day-turned-sunny, we would be melancholy?

Is it the constant blowing of the wind, making us want to sit close with someone we love, to feel close and needed, but our not being able to? Is it the restlessness of the wind, which races here from someplace else and yet, entirely discontent with staying, rushes past without even acknowledging the place?

The wind makes me think of faraway places and faraway times, things unreachable and untouchable as I sit in the window's late afternoon sun. The sun is cheery but also far away, and the strength of the wind makes it seem almost watery, dilute.

The windows need to be cleaned, and on them I can see the shadows of anxious branches, clearly disturbed by the wind. The chimes noise their concern too, and I imagine that they're clinging to each other, the branches and chimes. They must be cold.

When the wind has gone for a few moments, the tension eases a bit and everything, including my heart, waits still.