Over the last six weeks or so I have been reading a couple of books in relation to encountering God and reaching my promised land... and during this time I have found such a hunger for more of God beginning to well up inside me... more than I have ever experienced before and I am absolutely loving spending time with God and just can't seem to get enough! It is so true that if we draw near to God that He will absolutely draw near to us!!
One of the most significant realisations I have had has been that I need to become more like Jesus and one thing about Jesus that has really stuck with me is that not one single person who met Jesus during His time here on earth walked away disappointed. Each and every person who chased after Jesus walked away from their encounter with Him fully satisfied. Jesus healed every single person who was sick or diseased and He even raised the dead. That is just so totally awesome!!!... not one single person walked away dissatisfied! Imagine how incredible that would be if every single person we prayed for walked away completely and totally healed!
And an even more amazing thing is that Jesus said we would do even greater things than He because we would have the Holy Spirit... and that is what I am chasing after right now!
I so deeply desire such an encounter with the Holy Spirit so that I can become like Jesus... this is my life-long pursuit.
'My soul thirst for You, my flesh yearns for You'. Psalm 63:1
I was reading my Bible just before going to bed the other night.... blind Bartimaeus was sitting at the gate and heard that Jesus was coming by. He was calling out to Jesus, ‘Son of David... have mercy on me’. Jesus heard Bartimaeus and stopped in his tracks. He then asked Bartimaeus ‘What do you want?’...
I felt challenged as I read that story. How many times do my prayers stop Jesus to take notice of what I am saying? And ‘What do I want?’
I also began to question myself... do I actually ask Jesus for exactly what I want? I have lots of dreams and desires in my heart but do I actually voice them enough in my prayers so that Jesus takes notice? Obviously Jesus already knew what Bartimaeus wanted because He could see that he was blind... so why did He ask him ‘What do you want?’
Jesus wants us to ask Him for what we want even though He may already know the desires of our heart. There is that other Scripture that says ‘You have not because you ask not’.
The next day we had a guest speaker in our staff meeting and he spoke about several things but he also spent a little bit of time on this same story. I was flabbergasted!! Obviously God is trying to tell me something! Perhaps I need to get on my knees more often and ask Jesus for what I want.
James 4:2 You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.
The past two to three weeks have been very busy for me with friends and family getting married, having babies and baby showers, celebrating birthdays, etc.. lots of good things to rejoice about and wonderful excuses for a party!
Last night as I was busy putting together and wrapping a couple of pressies for two of these momentous occassions I was thinking about how much joy I get out of giving people presents. For me, with my love language of 'gifts' it is almost as good as, and if not better than, actually receiving a gift for myself. I do love to receive gifts and I am very happy and extremely blessed to have a wonderful husband who is thoughtful and generous in his gift giving but I absolutely love to see the expression on someone else's face as they open a present which the totally adore... especially if it is the one I have given them!
But a feel a tinge of sadness for many of those in the society in which we live... a people and a generation who are so caught up with self and focussed on get, get, get, and more, more, more... don't want to miss out attitudes... gotta have the latest craze. They do not know or understand the great blessing that it is to give to others... they don't understand the proverb 'it is more blessed to give than to receive'... they don't understand that what they sow they will reap.
As a Christian I believe it is so much more important for me be understand the principles of giving and being a generous person. God has given us the greatest gift of all in His only Son, Jesus. He gave His Son so that we might have life, and life more abundantly. The only thing that I need to do in return is surrender my whole life into His hands.
It seems so very simple and nothing compared to what we have already received... eternal life... and yet with society thrusting that 'keep up with the Jones' mentality down our necks, it sometimes takes everything inside of us to stand up for what we really believe in. Instead we try to hold onto parts of our lives as tight as we can so that we can maybe still 'look good' in the eyes of society. However, if we do take the risk of giving our whole entire lives to Him to do His will, we would probably be extremely amazed at what God will again give us in return.... even though He has already given us so much.
