And It's Three Years Later...

And I'm realizing that I'm missing the opportunity to write about the journey of "brideship" that I'm on...I was thinking about starting a blog and then I realized I already had one dedicated to that purpose. So, I'm back. Again.

Turn my eyes from looking at what is worthless; give me life in Your ways.

(Psalm 119:37)

I've been pray-reading my way through Psalm 119 in my devotional time for the last week or two. And it just continues to open up this desire, this hunger in my heart to encounter God through His decrees. 

And I was at a loss trying to decide how to describe where I'm at right now and then I realized this post I wrote says it just fine.

Dove's Eyes

I sleep, but my heart is awake. A sound! My love is knocking!
(Song of Solomon 5:2 HCSB)

I belong to my love, and his desire is for me.
(Song of Solomon 7:10 HCSB)

This morning, the Lord had me reading through Song of Solomon. Heidi's doing a study of Song of Solomon right now (she talked about it a little in her last post) and it's one of those things that's been cropping up all over the place. I'm fully aware of its natural meaning of the joys of married love, but, today, I was reading it with an eye towards its spiritual meaning of the Lord pursuing us as a bridegroom pursues his bride.

He finds me desirable and my heart thrills and responds to His love.

How beautiful you are, my darling. How very beautiful! Your eyes are doves.
(Song of Solomon 1:15 HCSB)

I read last night in Bob Sorge's Secrets of the Secret Place that doves have no peripheral vision. So, when the Lord says our eyes are doves, He is saying our gaze needs to be firmly fixed on Him to the exclusion of everything else. We have tunnel vision--nothing else even registers but Him.

And the joy of it is, His eyes are described as doves as well. He is gazing back at us with that same intensity of adoration!

His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, washed in milk and set like jewels.
(Song of Solomon 5:12 HCSB)

Oh, Lord, I set my gaze fully on You. Be magnified in my sight until You are all I can see. Hold my attention, Lord--don't let me be distracted by anything. I want to be captured and enthralled with You and You alone.

And, Lord, I thank You that You have fixed Your faze firmly upon me. I have no idea why You have chosen me, why You look upon me with such intensity, but I am so thankful for it. Teach me to respond to Your love--enlarge my heart's capacity to receive from You.

Amen.

Fasting Words

Skip (who, apparently, intends to post as well and plans to post by the name everyone else knows her as) let me borrow a book a week or two ago. Was it that short a time ago? So much has changed since then. Anyway, the book is called The Rewards of Fasting: Experiencing the Power and Affections of God by Mike Bickle with Dana Candler. It's a great book and it's totally rocked my world, bringing me into a deeper realization of what fasting is and what it's designed for.

There's a chapter in the book called "The Five Expressions of a Fasted Lifestyle" and it explains that we can fast food, time, energy, money, and words. These are expressed by fasting food, praying, serving, giving, and blessing your enemies. The "blessing your enemies" bit is what surprised me--I'd never heard that before.

Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
(Matt 5:44)

For if you forgive men their tresspasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
(Matt 6:14)

I know I can't be the only one who realizes how insane a commandment that is and how utterly uncapable we are of doing that outside of God. I'm learning firsthand just how quickly I move to defend myself, how easy it is to snap back, or to complain to my husband or friends how unfairly I'm being treated.

This is the area of fasting that is most quickly bringing up the character traits that I need to submit to God, the things in my soul that need to be purified by His holy fire. I know the only way these ugly things can be rooted out of me is to stay in these situations and die to myself, die to the things that I want to do. It's a constant checking of my first response and giving God complete control of my tongue, of my words.

This is the area of my life that forces me to my knees, repenting of what I have done (said, thought) crying out for God to give me grace, to give me strength. I am wholly unable to do this on my own, it makes me realize how completely dependent I must be on God.

Our selfishness has to die before we are able to leave our defense completely in God's hands. Refusing to speak against those who mistreat us goes against our natural tendency of self-preservation. Jesus committed Himself to God to make things right when men reviled and threatened Him...

When we bless our enemies, we give up the right to the emotional and social strength we might have gotten from fighting back. We fast from defending our reputation, and trust the Lord to fight for us when we are silent. This is perhaps the expression of the fasted lifestyle taken the least literally by believers. We think, surely God would not want me to be silent right now when that person is so overtly wrong! He would want the truth to win out, right? Confident that we are doing the right thing, we speak out to defend ourselves and expose our enemies. Yet the invitation and call of God is to willingly and agressively entrust ourselves, our reputations and our relationships into the hands of God--not seeking to perserve them ourselves, but trusting Him with them entirely.

(The Rewards of Fasting by Mike Bickle with Dana Candler, pgs 76-77, emphasis added)

Lord, teach me to rest in You. Whether I am ever redeemed from this situation or not, let me rest wholly in Your love for me. Help me to guard my mouth, Lord, to only speak Your words of love in this situation.

Holy Spirit, love this person through me. Let Your supernatural love flow through me, shift my heart towards them. Amen.

Significance

Turn my eyes from looking at what is worthless; give me life in Your ways.
(Psalm 119:37 HCSB)

And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you can determine what really matters and can be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.
(Philippians 1:9-10 HCSB)

Those are some verses that have been smacking me in my face lately. For the last week, in my personal prayer time, two of my focal points have been praying my way through Psalm 119 and the apostolic prayers of Paul. So, each day, I would come across these verses and each day they touched off a realization in my heart, a new way of thinking that I have to step into on a daily basis.

The Lord desires for us to be able to discern what has eternal significance. It is the mark of a mature believer to be able to focus on eternity and not just be blown about by whatever we feel is important at that particular moment.

When believers are sucked into the cares of this world, it includes being utterly consumed by the urgent things, and not being able to determine what is truly significant.

God has been challenging me lately to examine my life and see the quality of the work I have produced. Have I built on the foundation with gold, silver, and costly stones...things that will last? Or have I used wood, hay, or straw, those things that will perish in the Day of Judgement when they are tested with fire (1 Corinthian 3:12-13)? Each day I have to make a renewed commitment to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33).

Lord, turn my eyes from looking at worthless things. Enlarge my ability to walk in Your love and discernment, to determine what really matters and has significance. Teach me how to make seeking you first the focus of each day. Let everything else that I do on any given day flow out of tapping into Your heart for the people and situations I come in contact with.

I'm Back

Four years ago, my friend, Skip, and I started this blog. We were starting to have some pretty intense conversations about what God was teaching us and we decided to chronicle them here, kind of in a way to continue our discussions when we weren't together. And then, we let it fall to the side as our lives shifted and we started to focus on other things.

In the last six months, God has totally drawn both of our hearts to seeking Him as our first love. It's been pretty amazing hearing what God is doing in the other person's life because it totally encourages us to keep moving forward, to keep seeking after him. And I started thinking about our defunct blog again, wondering if it might be time to dust this off and start posting here again.

A couple of days ago, I decided it was time. Not only to talk about what God is doing in my own life, but also because I see God doing this all across our generation. I hear it in conversations, I read it in my friends' blogs. So, I wanted a place to write about it too. A record for myself to see what God is doing, a place where I can dialogue with others and encourage them to respond to God drawing them.

I don't know yet if Skip will join me again. She knows I'm opening the blog back up, but I don't think she's made a decision about her role yet. For the moment, we've decided to leave our old posts up. I read some of them to her yesterday and it was amazing how God spoke to us then and how it echoes what He's telling us now.

Anyways, this is my "welcome back" post. I'm pretty much just shouting into the abyss right now since there's no one reading this (yet), but that's okay. I'll be back later to share a little more about what God is doing in me right now.

It's Been A While. I just realized that instead of complaining about half the crap going on in my life right now, I should realize that this is exactly the opportunity I've been looking for. The opportunity to surrender everything that I want, all the selfish little nitpicky things that are getting stepped on, and submerge myself in who God is and in who He desires for me to be. This is the moment when I should be "dying to self", ruthlessly rooting out that portion of myself that's protesting being molded like clay. So, yeah, I realize that now is the time. How am I going to get myself to do it?

Maybe I Can Make It Through This. After posting the entry from last night, I decided to take a look at some of the old Bride's Journey blogs and the stuff I wrote on waiting (from way back in February) helped...a lot. So, I guess that's where I'm at. Waiting and realizing that means so much more than just hanging around and waiting for something else to launch me out of this place in which I managed to land.