Boxed Hope

Life just crushes down hard. Sometimes. The whisper of the Father comes softly. Often making no sense to my weary mind. I can feel my body fall hard down on the blanket in the sun. Frustration welling up inside. Opening The Word give a steadiness to my heart. I find the angry words dissipating on my tongue. I face forhead down into the blanket and cry out for relief. Sometimes I cry out for Jesus with skin on!

The car pulled in unnoticed to me and my mothering child runs fast! There is someone here to see you! My seasoned friend comes up the stairs with the one who smiles. She hands me a box filled with never ending hope and she kneels with me and my cherubs to share why it is important for us to be real. Father doesn't prefer to use a stuffed up fake.  My mind reeled! Really? I am thinking...No one wants this me that is ticked at unfairness,  injustice, and just plain sin! No one wants to hear how frustrated I am mostly with myself. No one wants to hear of the hurt dragging my heart down into the pit of my gut...

Then He is revealed. The One who sees. I tell my true friend...I just am sick of it being about me! I want to focus on helping others and doing good works! I don't want to think about me anymore! She reminds me it is about me. It is my own business I am to mind after all. It is God redeeming me and making me like Him that I can do anything of worth. I cry out I can't. And she says He can. I say but and she says hold on.

This friend I found listens and shares. I release words to the wind that make the yoke shed off and the eyebrows lift.Wow. That is what it feels like to have a Christ like friend. Someone obedient to God enough to come see me and pour healing balm on my wounds. How beautiful are the feet of Him that brings good news! I am thankful for a friend like that. I look forward to the Father using me to return the favor.

Personal Prison

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord,
“He is my refuge and my fortress,

    my God, in whom I trust.”Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. 
Psalm 91: 1-3

I have been bound but now I am free!

I believe that prisons come in all shapes, spaces, sizes, and manifestations. Some can be sickness. Some can be relational, some can be mental attack, some can be just plain rebellion. Some can sneak up on you and close down hard. Some can be bound with painful memories and a wounded heart. Some can come with questions that don't make sense. Keep us from trusting enough to take that one step that would lead us out. Loneliness leaves the cell of our hearts feeling cold and icy. Loss can make the floor we kneel on seem rock hard and jagged. And bitterness...oh how it closes the ears and dulls the light to the way to freedom.

Joseph was in Prison. He was there on a false account. God was with him there. He brought him out of the lowest parts and made him a leader there. I think of how he brought Rahab out to. She was in her prison too. God reached in and saved her before crumbling those walls down. 

I love Him for His timing. He makes all things beautiful in His time. 

The frightening part for me is that even the places that seem the darkest, over time, can feel like home. 

Our Father in His faithfulness to us, thankfully, doesn't allow us to stay there. He reminds us this is not our home. He has gone and prepared a place for us. A place where there will be no darkness, and certainly not prison. Not prison of any shape or form.

In His time, In His time.

He makes all things beautiful in His time

Lord please show me everyday

As your teaching me your way

That you do just what you say

In your time

Thank You Father for sending your son. He set this captive free. Your timing is just right.

Breath Relief

"If you cannot find time to pray,

ask for forgiveness.

Ask to be cleansed of the sin

of having no time to pray...

It could be that Satan is pushing you

into too much work so that you

cannot take time to pray."

-Corrie Ten Boon

Yesterday I found complete depletion. Out of no where my mind spun and my heart sank. I sat and searched and called a friend. In the wise words of a seasoned woman I found my sin. I have not sought God in prayer. I have justified my lack of drawing near to God. I have been actively serving. I am meeting the needs of the kingdom. Then in repentance I sit down and open to Psalm 1. 

Blessed is the man...his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 

I have been doing a lot of good things, and I found myself with a list of more things to do. Devastatingly for me, meditating on God's word had not even reached the list. Oh how truly sinful I am. God makes it so simple. How grateful I am he doesn't stockpile my faults and failures like I tend to do to others that I love. I pray that I learn this lesson. Blessed is the day when forgiveness comes to me like breathing. Without thought I sigh out my hurts to the wind. 

Praise the Name of Jesus who has taken away the wrongs of this world. May Your name be proclaimed loudly from my mouth and those of my children's children! Blessings on you today as you read this. Open God's word. Let it bless you!