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.

Totally Dependent. Due to current events that have happened in my life (see my blog for an extremely incomplete explanation), I have found myself in a place of feeling completely and totally abandoned and alone. This is one of those times when I guess the lesson to be learned is "lean on God and He will provide". Hmm. We'll see if I can live that out because although depending on God is what I should be doing, I just feel like I'm drowning or being slowly suffocated. I hate this place I'm in. Truly I hate it. And I've been crying or feeling like I want to cry every minute of the day. And I hate it.

Aloha. I just went to check the Bride's Journey (the last time I, ValMarie, posted was 2 months and 13 days-sorry 'bout that) and it was saying "Page Not Found"...so this is a maintenance check I guess. And I'll post something real soon.

Surround Me. We sung that song in church today:

Surround me, O Lord
Surround me, O Lord
Surround me, O Lord
Let Your presence fill this place

Simple, sweet, to the point. Surround me, Lord...

More About Waiting. Waiting is not merely a period of lazy inactivity, of lolling around while keeping one ear half-cocked for God's 150-decibel Words Of Instruction. No, to wait is to continually hold one's self in a still, silent attitude of readiness or expectancy in order to be able to immediately respond to His whisper. It is to continually and diligently seek Him, His Face. It is to place one's self in a hidden, concealed position (the secret place) in order to block out any distractions that may keep you from hearing/seeing his direction for yoour life. It is applying yourself to the pursuit of His Presence. It is seizing every moment to apply truths God has already revealed to your life. It is realizing being weak is the point of greatest strength.

I'm not really sure what I'm getting at. However, I realize that purification/consecration/waiting all hinge on our inadequacy to live the life expected/ordained for us. If I could do it on my own, why would I submit myself to fires that set ablaze every single thing I hold dear to my heart? If I could do it on my own, why would I go through the frustration of not knowing what happens next? Doing things this way hurts! I'm blind, helpless, naked and limping down a very narrow path...What's the point?

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead...I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of Crist Jesus...for our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is even able to subdue all things to Himself." (Philippians 3:8-11, 14, 20-21)

I was listening to this (Vineyard's "Hungry") in Skip's car on the way home from service this morning:

Hungry, I come to You for I know You satisfy
I am empty, but I know Your love does not run dry
And so I wait for You, so I wait for You

I'm falling on my knees
Offering all of me
Jesus, You're all this heart is living for

Broken, I run to You for Your arms are open wide
I am weary, but I know Your touch restores my life
And so I wait for You, I wait for You

I'm falling on my knees
Offering all of me
Jesus, You're all this heart is living for

And I started thinking: Everywhere people talk about "waiting on the Lord" and I realized that I'm not entirely sure what that means....so I looked the word "wait" up:

"Wait": (n) a state or attitude of watchfulness or expectancy; a hidden or concealed position; (v) to remain inactive in readiness or expectation; to be ready

And I interpreted that to mean that waiting isn't a passive thing. It is active, something you do...waiting on the Lord is something you determine to do not something you stumble in to...you set yourself aside (hidden, concealed position) to wait...I don't know, I'm still stumbling through this...however, that's what I'm thinking of right now...

good to hear your thoughts, skip... :o)

I logged in to Blogger with the intent of replying to Skip's blog. However, I just got out of the car with her and I'm definitely in this chewing-digesting mode from everything we discussed. So, I guess I'll be responding later when I've really thought about everything. Meanwhile, I was working on cleaning out my closet...really cleaning it. I pulled out all the clothes and I've been trying them on and sorting into piles: "definite keeps", "need to be fixed or cleaned or something", "dubious", and "nots". And I realized that pretty much describes my life right now...I'm holding up every piece of it to the light of God's Word and examining it: "Is this right?", "Does it fit with where God wants me right now?", "Does it need to be cleaned and restored?", "Do I need to get rid of it?"...

Tonight I rediscovered Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot. I went thumbing through my (well-marked) copy, just reading little bits and snatches, and came across some amazing words of wisdom...

Discipleship usually brings us into the necessity of choice between duty and desire. They are not always mutually exclusive, however. When our hearts are set on obedience, we can be sure of the needed wisdom to tell between a conflict and a harmony. It may be a slow and painful process.

Lord, I give You my heart, I give You my soul, I live for You alone. With every breath that I take, every moment I'm awake, Lord have Your way in me. We sung that song in church today and it struck me that those lyrics are the ultimate expression of brideship (a word that Skip and I invented)...an active giving of everything you are in order to receive Him and everything He is...

I bullied Skip (who is a girl) into starting a team blog with me. We have to go set up a user id for her now though.